


Dear Rustin

by blackeyedblonde, hartcohle



Category: True Detective
Genre: Gen, Letters, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:31:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 42,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4345124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackeyedblonde/pseuds/blackeyedblonde, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hartcohle/pseuds/hartcohle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two hours until dusk and Marty can't take it anymore, snatches the card off the table and pulls up a chair at his father's old rolltop desk, brushing off the filmy layer of dust that had gathered on its surface. He draws out a piece of stationery paper and palms a pencil, still sharp, and wonders why it feels like a weapon in his hand. His eyes graze over the soldier's name again. </p>
<p>"Rustin Cohle," Marty murmurs out loud, weighing the words on his tongue while he presses the tip of the pencil there and scoffs. "What the hell kind of name is that?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, we've been working and beta-reading together for over a year now and decided it was high time we put our heads together and cranked out something with both our names on it. This will be an ongoing WIP, told alternatively in letter and prose format, that details Rust and Marty's relationship as it grows on paper throughout the second world war.
> 
> Everything you see here was pieced and welded together in google docs amidst a lot of key-smashing and emotional backspacing. Much like Gaiman and Pratchett, we're not really sure anymore where one author stops and the other begins, so what you see here is a true collaborative effort. We hope you guys enjoy the ride. - Allie and Hannah
> 
> You can also follow our inspiration and update blog at dear-rustin.tumblr.com

What the hell kind of name is that? Sounds like some farming town down in Florida we went through when I was a kid, whole damn place smelled like rotten tomatoes. Your mama one of them jazz-swinging types? Uncommon kind of thing to hear, all I’m trying to say.

Anyhow, gal friend of mine handed your address off to me a few days back, says you’d opted into some pen pal program for the troops. I ain’t too much of a writer but she seems to think you needed somebody to talk to, acted real persistent about it, and truth be told I couldn’t be bothered with toting your contact card all the way back into town for somebody else to find. Figure you were probably wanting to hear from some big-titted blonde and damn if I can hold that against you. Come to think of it, you ever get cheesecake letters from more than you can handle, feel free to pass them along this way. All in the name of good patriotism, brother.

Suppose I should be upfront and say I ain’t out there fighting proud for my country on account of a bad leg I got, accident twisted it up years back. So I just work my own farm these days, stay busy with that most of the year. Animals, few crops and stuff. It’s honest enough work—least enough to make a living.

I’ll be signing off for now, can’t be here burning the midnight oil when every spare drop is headed your way already. Appreciate your service and all, whatever it is you’re doing, and here’s to kicking them krauts in the ass.

  
* * * * *  


 

"It's about that time, Blue," Marty says, slowly easing to his feet as the dog circles around his ankles. "You gonna watch over the place while I’m gone? Keep everybody in line?"

One of Blue’s ears cocks up and over to the side as he sits back on his haunches, tail thumping and sweeping across the wooden planking. Marty fixes his pants leg where it’s a little twisted around his left knee and then pauses at the porch steps, turning to step back through the white-washed screen door.

"Let's do one more round," he says with a sigh, patting one hand against his hip. “C’mon boy.”  
  
He makes his way through the kitchen and living room, eyes scanning over the cooled stovetop and old radio before heading over to the master bedroom. He hasn't stepped foot in there for the past seven years, always peers inside before he goes to town, making sure nothing is amiss. The heavy quilt on the bed is just as unrumpled as the morning it was last made, a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses folded atop a bible on the nearest nightstand. A lady’s vanity in the corner is still arranged with a powder dish and tortoise-handled comb, two slender perfume bottles and a strand of freshwater pearls left out like a delicate afterthought.   
  
Sunlight filters in through the gauzy drapes and Marty watches dust float on the midmorning air. He can almost hear the echo of memories past, a smaller boy huddled between two familiar shades as they tickled his sides or held him close during the worst summer storms. The room seems like a time capsule of everything before the accident, like if he steps inside he might break it somehow, fracture the good memories and watch them sink through the cracks left behind.   
  
He lowers his eyes and softly shuts the door.

The rest of the house is still in order, everything settled in its proper place, all the rooms empty and quiet save for the soft click of Blue’s paws on the floorboards as he trails along behind. Marty still worries about house fires even after he's checked the whole place six times, can picture the last vestiges of his life sitting in a heap of ash while he's filling his buggy at the grocery almost twelve miles away. The thought lingers and follows him outside as he latches the screen door and steps heavily off the porch, pulling a key ring from his jacket pocket as he waits for the dog to heel and follow.  
  
He glances off at the pasture, the cow swishing her tail as she grazes through the grass, the chickens clucking and pecking in their coop just out of his line of vision. The horses stand close together under their favorite oak tree, the old gelding nudging the white mare with his nose. She's just about fit to burst and Marty smiles despite himself, a warmth washing over him when he thinks about the new foal that will be stumbling around in just another couple weeks.

He walks around to the driver's side of his truck, reaching down to rub around his knee. The brace under his pants tightens around his leg as he bends it to step inside, and he lets out a long breath once he's sitting again. Blue is watching him from down in the dirt, tail wagging slower now, the sun making the spots on his coat shine like coal blots on iron-grey marble.

"You should stay here," Marty says, nodding towards the dog like they’re just two men talking business, one hand resting casual on the steering wheel. But Blue whines and shuffles once in place, eyes shining bright as he continues to stare. "Don't need to come, Blue, you know better than that."   
  
A long moment passes before Marty clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth and he can't take it, can't take the thought of the dog wandering around and waiting for him to come home, sprawled out and despondent on the porch like love would never find him again. "Alright," he says as he sags back against the seat, knowing full well he’s been smelled out as a sucker. “Hop on in.”

Blue scrambles up into the cab without needing to be told twice, skipping light over Marty’s thighs to land in the empty passenger seat. He sits there and all but smiles as he pants in the dusty heat, waiting patiently for Marty to reach over and roll the window down. The egg basket and milk urn are already strapped down in the truck bed, checked and rechecked, and Marty cranks the engine over before steering the old Chevy down the dirt road that’ll lead him out the farm gate and into town.

  
  


  
He counts the sparse fan of bills in his hand, his brow furrowing as he adds up the sum in his head. He hasn't had this much to sell in over three months and the pay isn't near to half what he would have gotten a year ago for this amount. "Shouldn't this be a little more?" he asks, looking up at Greene, the balding clerk perched behind the counter on a three-legged stool.

"Wartime living, buddy," Greene says as he pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, like he doesn't know Marty's name, or maybe just doesn't want to feel it roll off his tongue.

Marty clears his throat and nods, hoping the man doesn't notice the fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. He takes his wallet and stows the money away, heading towards the door without another word. He stops in his tracks when he notices the flower arrangements sitting by the window, some half-wilted in the heat but still a gash of bright color in the dusty shop. A pink peony bright like a sunbeam hangs forward, shoving itself past the rest, and Marty reaches out to pluck it free from the bouquet without a spare thought.

He's got a date with Maggie Herbert in a little under twenty minutes, but he knows she wouldn't be the one to call it that. Especially not when Ted Sawyer has been calling on her night and day for the past fortnight or two, giving her a new blue scarf to tie around her hair when he takes her for country rides in his big white car. But Marty thinks the flower might help his cause a little, might endear him to her in ways she hasn't yet bothered to imagine. He hopes it makes her smile.

"How much for this one on its own?" he asks, turning towards Greene again.

"Take it," Greene says, shrugging one shoulder as he scrawls something in a catalog ledger spread open on the counter. "Nobody's touched those flowers since I put 'em out."

Marty grins, raising it in the air like a salute before he heads back outside. Blue is hanging his head out the window and eyeing the flower, his tail going a mile a minute. Marty holds it away from him, reaching out to scratch behind his ear. "Oh no, you ain't eating this one. Don't care how you go at the ones behind the barn, this one's off limits."

The clinic is a few blocks down by the barbershop, and Marty gently lays the single peony across the dash before nosing the truck that way.

As soon as he shifts into park he can see Maggie through the front window. She's standing behind the counter, hair swept up in the back with a pencil stuck through it, making slow but exaggerated gestures with her hands to an ancient-looking woman standing in front of her. Maggie looks up when the bell announces Marty's entrance and smiles at him with a sweet quirk of her mouth, pressing a paper bag into the old woman’s bony hands before helping guide her out the front door.   
  
“It’s important you remember to actually take the medication this time, Miss Rita,” Maggie says, flagging down a bored-looking teenage boy leant up against the wall outside the door. “Davie here is going to help make sure you get home—I’ll tell Doctor Wilson we’re setting your follow-up appointment for the same time next week.”

Davie pushes a toothpick to the corner of his mouth and holds an arm out for the old woman, eyes sliding heavy up and down Marty’s left side before he moves to steer her down the street. Maggie brushes a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes once they’re gone, hands smoothing down the front of her pink nurse's smock. "You're a little early," she says, gaze falling down to the flower in Marty’s hand.

"Got this for you," Marty says, holding it out between two fingers with a small smile. His eyes don’t quite meet hers, wavering somewhere around her temple and the silver necklace clasped at her throat. “Color reminded me of your uniform, little bit.”

Maggie takes the peony and spins it once before holding it up to her nose for a sniff. “Thanks, Marty,” she says, smiling faintly. She lets the lines around her eyes crinkle for a spare moment before setting the flower down on the front counter across a stack of yellow forms, turning to move back around the cluttered desk.

“Go on ahead and get us a table,” she says, tucking a loose curl behind her ear. “I’ll meet you down at the diner when I finish up here, should just be a few more minutes—Dr. Wilson wanted to consult on a few things before I went on break."

There’s two women still sitting in the waiting room and Marty cracks his jaw, trying not to let his eyes linger too long on the forgotten flower on her desk. He drums his fingers on his hip and watches Maggie work the room, gathering up a stack of papers in her arms and retrieving a pen from a mug at the corner of the desk.

"Alright," he says. "Probably gonna be outside so Blue can sit with us."

Maggie looks up at that, smiling brightly. "Was hoping you'd bring him," she says, and then turns to call one of the women up to the desk.

Marty sighs and pushes the front door open, his shoulders wilting as he swings back up into the truck. "Likes you more than she likes me,” he murmurs, shooting a look at Blue and waiting for the engine to turn over and cough. Blue places one wavering paw on Marty's knee and licks a smile onto his face.

 

 

They always meet up at a little cafe called Annie's a couple blocks down, and Marty gets a table in the rear that’s angled away from all the hustle and bustle, tucked up under the awning in the paltry shade.   
  
It's rare to see fighting-age men around anymore and he knows he sticks out like a sore thumb wherever he goes, twenty-seven years old and already out of commission. Knows all the eyes that follow him, knows they can tell why he isn't there. Knows that's why most of them glare at him in the first place, that horrible memory that sets off a ringing in his ears whenever it sneaks into his thoughts, leaves a cold chill down the length of his spine.

The stark reality of what one moment can do. Marty can almost hear the cars colliding when he closes his eyes, the sharp gasp he drew in when what was happening finally struck him—

A redheaded waitress shows up and knocks him out of it, smacking a fat wad of pink bubblegum between her front teeth. "What are you drinking?" she asks.

"Uh," he says, shifting in his seat. "Water for me. Lemonade for the lady."

The girl looks at the empty seat across from him, meets his eyes again with her crayoned brows further up on her forehead while she pops a bubble.

"She'll be right along," Marty says, clearing his throat.

Blue's leash is wound around the leg of Marty's chair and he stares into the cafe, panting hard at the charbroil aroma coming from the open kitchen window. The waitress disappears inside and Marty takes the faded and coffee-stained menu in hand, looking for something he can share with the dog.

"What're you in the mood for, huh?" he asks.

Blue doesn't pay Marty any mind, his nose twitching and pointed toward the sky. Marty follows his gaze and sees two familiar profiles in the sun-filled front door. Maggie is heading through the cafe towards him with Ted Sawyer hot on her heels, that fancy white car looming behind them, big and proud where it’s parked on the main street.

Marty heaves a sigh, doesn't have enough time to prepare properly before they're stepping through the door and onto the back porch. Ted is only a hair taller than Maggie, has teeth too white for anybody around these parts and always seems to be wearing clothes a size too small for his frame. He wasn't chosen to be sent to the frontlines because of his asthma, but Marty suspects he pulled a few loose strings to stay stateside because he's a big hotshot manager for the Baton Rouge banking branch. Marty watches them laugh, watches Ted whisper words into Maggie's hair and flash her that blinding grin, and he starts to pull himself to his feet before Ted holds out his hand.

"Don't need to stand up, Marty, relax!" he says, smacking Marty on the shoulder. Marty raises his eyebrows and settles back down. "How you been doing? How's the farm? How are all those chickens?"

"Still cluckin'," Marty says, loath to look up and meet his eyes. He notices Blue's tail wagging wildly as it thumps against his bad leg, beating there like a small betrayal.

Ted laughs too loud with one hand braced on his chest and reaches with the other to pull out Maggie's chair. "I bet they are," he says, finally. "Well, it's nice to see you up and around town for once. Take care of her for me." He leans down and presses a kiss to Maggie's cheek. "See you tonight, Miss Herbert?"

"I'll be there," she says, one hand coming up to lightly touch the spot where his lips had landed, a little pink but not from too much rouge. "Now go on."

"Yes ma'am," Ted says, ruffling Blue’s ears with a wink. He’s still grinning as he heads back the way he came, swinging out the diner door into the drape of afternoon with a skip hitching in his step.

“He’s a little peppy for there being a war going on and all,” Marty says, sniffing as he reaches down to straighten the salt and pepper shakers. “You’d think all this heat and dust would be botherin’ his lungs.”

Maggie blinks and picks up her own menu, mouth pinched a bit firmer than it was before while she reads through her lashes. “You know asthma doesn’t work like that, Marty,” she says. “And he’s been doing good work at the bank. You of all people should be happy we’ve still got something of an economy running in a time like this, what with the farm and all.”

"Yeah, well," Marty sighs, thinking he'd still be well off even if Ted wasn't around in his seersucker suits and ivory-faced wristwatch, though he doesn't say as much out loud. The waitress returns and Maggie orders the same strawberry salad she gets every time they come here, Marty going for a burger with sweet potato fries, the latter a special dug up local straight from the Louisiana soil.

Maggie sips her lemonade through a straw already stained with lipstick, eyeing him from across the table. He notices the look and his brow furrows a bit as he draws his glass closer. "How do you like runnin' the show over at the clinic?” he asks. “Seems like old Doc Wilson finally cut you off the harness.”

“Believe me,” Maggie says, “I’m still the lone workhorse pulling weight around there. He’s too damn old to get up out of his chair anymore, sits in the back office and sleeps with the keys to the morphine and chloroform cabinet.”   
  
She picks up her menu and fans herself while she talks, pausing when something loud clatters in the kitchen. “Ever since they shipped Felix off it’s been me crossing every I and dotting every T, writing out all the prescription notes for the pharmacist. I don’t even have the time to be sitting here right now.”   
  
The harshness in her voice softens just a little, one hand reaching down to rest on top of Blue’s head. “But I guess I needed to make time for an old friend,” she says, passing a small smile across the table. “Two old friends.”

Marty can see the waitress behind the counter with their order balanced on a tray, paused to jimmy something on the coffee pot before she slips through the swinging door. Maggie hasn’t spotted her yet and reaches down, then, to fumble around in her pocketbook. When her hands come back into view she’s holding a poster that looks like it was torn off a tack on the wall, sliding that and a smaller piece of cardstock across the vinyl tabletop, careful to keep them from smudging through the water rings pooling under their glasses.

“While I’m thinking about it, I saw this at the post office and thought it might be good for you,” she says, watching Marty’s eyes rove over the glossy paper. “Lot of the soldiers don’t have family they can write to, and—well, since you’re not really too occupied these days—"

Marty straightens up, his heart beating loud in his ears. "I'm occupied. I'm plenty occupied."

"Marty, I don't want you to shoot this down right away." Maggie stops talking again when the waitress reappears, drawing back the papers so she can set the food down. "I just think it would be nice," Maggie continues, once they're alone again. "For you and for him. Whoever he is."

"What do you want me writin' to some guy for, huh?" Marty says, picking up one of his fries and smearing it through a dollop of ketchup he shakes onto his plate. "Why don't you ask one of your girlfriends? They turn you down already?"

Maggie chews on her lower lip, resting the papers back down on the clear side of the table. "Weren't you all about the war couple minutes ago? Don't you think those guys deserve something, some kind of contact with people back home? They started this program for pen pals, and the men who signed up obviously want someone to write to. Why shouldn't that someone be you?"   
  
She picks up her fork and stirs in her dressing, listening to the tines clink against the bottom of the bowl. "Thought you might like it, too. Having someone to talk to, when you're out there at the farm. Someone other than Blue and those horses."  
  
Marty sees through the haze burning in his eyes. Sees the poster, an artist's rendering of a handsome soldier grinning and holding up a piece of mail, the words _'_ _Write to Help Fight!_ _'_ emblazoned big and bright in the sky above him. He thinks about reaching down, touching the small card with the address on it, but palms a knife and cuts his burger in half instead. "And this is the one you picked for me?" he asks, gesturing toward it with his chin, halving one side of the sandwich again before slipping a piece to Blue under the table.

"Mmhm," Maggie says, picking out a strawberry with her fingers. She watches him for a few minutes and then lets out a soft breath. "You gonna give it a chance? At least this one time—for me, Marty."

Marty looks up at her at that, sees her eyes boring into his from under heavy lashes, making something burn up from the base of his throat. He sighs, picks up the card with greasy fingers and slips it into his pocket, knowing it wouldn’t have taken much for him to give in from the start. "Happy?"

"Very," Maggie says, taking another sip of her lemonade.

He realizes then, with the card already tucked away, that he never even looked close enough at the scrawled writing to pick out the chosen name.

  
  
  
  
Marty doesn't look at the contact card for the next two days.

He isn't sure if he's doing it on purpose or just finding things to pass the time. It burns a phantom hole in his pocket long after he'd shed the pants for another pair, continues to lay hidden through a bath for Blue, a heavy oiling of his work boots, rounds and rounds of time with the animals and a long list of chores he wades through one by one out at the barn. Only when he's lugging the sheets off his bed down to be washed with his clothes does he find it again, the feel of heavy paper brushing against his fingers making his stomach knot up and drop like a sandbag.

It’s still tucked in the same pocket he left it, already a little worn and rumpled from neglect, and Marty briefly relives the moment when he took the card from Maggie—her eyes heavy and more intent on his than he could ever really remember, the way she’d pushed the poster across the table like she was throwing him an underhanded lifeline. He stands there outside in the sun next to the washtub, wearing just a pair of striped boxers and an undershirt, and finally drops his eyes to scan over the name.

The mailing address and regiment had been printed with black typeface, a standard card doled out by the boxful to be finished by a personal hand, but the top line holds the key to the soldier in question, a set of childish letters having filled it in with _Private Rustin Spencer Cohle_. The name is scrawled with blue ink, messy and smudged like it had been penned and left in a hurry.

Marty reaches down to scratch under one of the leather straps on his leg brace, a seam pulled tight between his eyes as he silently mouths the name to himself.  He chews on the inside of his cheek and takes it up to the porch, carefully sitting it on the side table under an empty vase so it doesn't blow away. He brings it inside when he's done with the laundry, places it on the dining room table he no longer eats at. It sits for a couple hours there, always in his peripherals as he moves around the house. Like it's another soul there with him, another beating heart silently judging every move he makes.

He doesn’t believe in ghosts, and he’ll be damned if he starts now.

Two hours until dusk and Marty can't take it anymore, snatches the card off the table and pulls up a chair at his father's old rolltop desk, brushing off the filmy layer of dust that had gathered on its surface. He draws out a piece of stationery paper and palms a pencil, still sharp, and wonders why it feels like a weapon in his hand. His eyes graze over the soldier's name again.

"Rustin Cohle," Marty murmurs out loud, weighing the words on his tongue while he presses the tip of the pencil there and scoffs. "What the hell kind of name is that?"

   


* * * * *

   


Afternoon hangs like an ironclad sheet over the coastline, wet and clammy where it pries fingers down beneath the collar of Morales’s uniform. He follows the narrow footpath that leads like a winding snake back up to the barracks, leaving the clamor of the other mens’ laughter and cajoling in the mess hall behind him.

The rain-heavy air makes the envelope in his hand feel damp and he holds it up again for another look while he walks, grinning around the cigarette jammed in the corner of his mouth when he spots the name in the corner. There’s a wide puddle outside the barracks door reflecting the English sky and he steps around it by habit before slipping inside, pressing and hiding the face of the letter against his jacket.

Only two other men are inside and Morales passes Jackie Shreveport where he’s hunched over and digging for something in his rucksack, one arm of his gold wire glasses clenched between his teeth. Morales bumps his cigarette by way of greeting when he passes and makes for the far end of the hall, footfalls thudding heavy between the long rows of empty beds. The figure he’s looking for is sprawled back on his issued mattress, muddy boots hanging off the end of the bed with his face hidden behind the cover of an open book. A lazy curl of smoke stretches up toward the ceiling, the haze in the muggy air mingling around his head like a halo.

Morales walks right up and drops the letter on the man’s stomach, waiting until the book falls flat on top of it before letting a grin loose like a white knife gash. “Delivery for Private Rustin Spencer Cohle!” he crows in a mock voice, dropping down on the empty mattress next to Rust’s. “Open it up, Lone Star. You’ve finally got some fucking fanmail.”

Rust reaches up to pull his own cigarette from the corner of his mouth and blinks at Morales through his lashes, lips parted enough to blow out a stream of smoke. “The hell is this?” he asks, reaching down to pull the letter out from under his dogeared copy of _The Stranger_. His eyes scan over his own name spelled out in a foreign hand and the stateside return address before he flips it like a playing card back into Morales’s chest, the point of one corner hitting him square in the sternum.

“You write this shit yourself?" Rust drawls, looking him up and down once before turning back to his book.

"That handwriting's a whole lot better than mine," Morales says, flicking the letter right back. "You know I wouldn't screw with you like this. One of those other guys might, but not me."

Rust turns down the corner to mark his page and sits the book on the bed beside him. "You went and put me in the damn lottery with all the other homesick soldiers, huh? Did you put your own name in there?"

"Got six unread letters from Mama already," Morales says with another grin, crossing his arms over his chest. "Sends them faster than I can read ‘em. Anyways, thought it would be good for you. Exciting, to get mail. Maybe you can even do some writing in something outside that damn ledger you insist on toting around like the Tax Man."

Rust lets a little sigh escape him, doesn't find much excitement in someone across the ocean knowing he's alive. Doesn't want anybody getting attached to him, just in case, but he doesn't tell Morales that. "Martin Hart," he says pitched low, narrowing his eyes. "This really ain't you?" he asks, gaze still held on the envelope.

"How many goddamn times—"

"Alright," Rust says. "Guess you woulda sent it from Sheila Hinkleberry or some shit if you were tryin' to pull one over on me." He thumbs over the sharp edge, holding it like it might not be real. A figment, a trick of the mind, this entire scene before him. The world’s uneven around the edges out here, and he’s always had a tendency to drift.

Morales knows that and snaps his fingers, stomping one heavy boot on the wooden floor beneath them. "Well? You gonna read it or not?"

"My private mail," Rust says, looking up at him. "Why would I read it in front of you?"

The other man scoffs, raising his dark eyebrows. "Got that there because of me," he says, gesturing towards it. "This might just be the first. Might get some Sheilas in the meantime, you buck up and stick with the program."

"Get on outta here," Rust says, something like a smile flashing around his eyes as he brings the cigarette back to his lips and takes a long drag.

"Martin got a girlfriend, you call me and I'll come runnin'. Maybe he'll send along some pretty pictures." Morales gives Rust a half-hearted salute and heads back out the way he came in, Shreveport trailing along in his wake with a silver flask of something he tucks into his front pocket.

Rust watches them go and turns the letter in his hand. After a few beating moments of silence he sets it down on top of his book and stands to follow, trying to ignore the empty feeling settling in his stomach at leaving it behind unopened. Words unspoken but already said, folded and waiting like a paper mine in his bedsheets.

His boots seem to know the way on their own accord and he can hear the mess hall before he sees it, the familiar hum of forty men growing louder the closer he gets. The old piano they toted in from a civilian corner in town is banging and plonking away like a dying mule and when Rust pushes through the door he spots a familiar shock of red hair seated in front of it, the mere sight always making his teeth set on a hard edge.

“Cut that racket the fuck out, Ginger!” somebody yells from the far side of the mess where a group of men are huddled close around a makeshift card table. “We brought that in for the fellas who could play and you couldn’t find a tune if it bit you in your Irish ass."

“Fuck you, Ginzo,” Ginger half-slurs over the commotion, drunk enough that he’s practically playing with his fists. “Like to see you come over here and make me.”

Rust steps past the piano and scans over the platoon’s familiar faces until he finds Morales set up in one corner, straddling a chair backwards with a glass of something dark already in hand. He makes his way across the room, weaving around the table where Harrison Gill is all but facedown in what looks like a bowl of cigarette ash and olive pits, snoring and drooling a wet spot on the back of his hand.

“If it isn’t King Cohle his fucking self, come to grace our table,” Eugene Demma says, leaning back to watch Rust down the bridge of his nose. “What’s got you deciding to mingle with the common folk all a sudden?”

“Probably come down here to class up your low-life ass, Demma,” Morales says, taking a swig of his drink. He pulls out a free chair and slaps a palm down in it, though Rust doesn’t make any move to sit down, standing there with his fingers braced along the back.

“Guess these are the valiant soldiers I've been hearing so much about," Rust says, eyes cast somewhere along the wall, six months on site and the place is already papered over thick with fliers and pinup girls and a crooked dartboard with more holes circling around it than on it. “Krauts got their work cut out for them."

A voice calls out from near the back of the room, Rust thinks it might be Howard or Christensen, he always gets them mixed up. "You're twenty-three years old, babyface, how about you try and have some fun? Need to stop beating off in those history books and get up on some sweet English tart for once." The boys break into a laugh and manage to get even louder, Ginger banging on the piano and bellowing some song that only he knows the words to. Morales peers up at Rust, slaps the chair again, and Rust finally eases down to sit next to him.

"So how was it?" Morales asks, leaning in close. "What's the guy got to say?"

"Nothin' special," Rust says, clearing his throat as he tries to tune out all the noise in the room.

"Did he say if he was older?" Morales asks, leaning heavy on the back of the chair. "Why the hell isn't he over here? You know Hendricks over there has got some old geezer back home, coughing up and sending him money.”

"Didn't say much," Rust says, letting the lie slip easy off his tongue. "Just wishing me well, tellin' me to keep my spirits up. Wanted me to extend the same to y’all, but I figure this bunch has already got a leg up on that." He keeps his features held even, blinking slow and easy while he reaches to pull his cigarette holder from his pocket. It pops open in his hand and he pulls a light free, only looking down to hold a flame to the tip and suck down the first long pull.

Morales snorts and throws back the rest of his drink, line of his throat bobbing twice in the mess hall’s dim lighting while the dark liquid drains from the glass. “Seemed like a thicker letter than just a single line of salutations,” he says, wiping his mouth and smiling just a little. “You didn’t read it.”

The air feels thick around his head as Morales weeds him out. All the men gathered together smell worse than a goddamn trash heap, and Rust blinks heavy, wanting to swallow against the ochre taste of their fear hiding beneath too much booze and a looming cloud of smoke. It lodges somewhere in the back of his throat, something he tries to chase away with his own cigarette.

“Did you read all six of those letters from your poor mama yet?” Rust asks, sending a stream of smoke up into the air. “I’ll get around to it.”

Morales shakes his head as he laughs. “Let me tell you what, Cohle, you’re a funny son of a—”

If he keeps talking Rust never manages to catch the tail-end of the sentence because Dwayne Gallagher, one of the youngest members of their platoon, half stumbles over to Morales with three other guys in tow, clutching an envelope with shaking fingers. The heavy paper has got a set of crimson lip prints pressed over the seal, and Rust knows what it is before they even get it open.

“Hit the fuckin’ jackpot, Tony!” Gallagher crows, pulling a fan of polaroids from the envelope and holding them up like a hand of winning cards in Morales’s face. “Courtesy of Miss Gwinnett County, I bet you ain’t seen anything as sweet as this Georgia Peach since we shipped out.”

Morales peers at the pictures and tries to pluck one free but Gallagher pulls them away again, holding them behind his back so Rust catches a spare glimpse of what looks like a shapely blonde-haired woman draped over in some kind of sheer chemise.

“What good is cheesecake if you ain’t gonna fucking share, Gallagher?” Morales says, snaking an arm around to try and snatch the polaroids. “Let’s see the goods.”

The scuffle starts when one of the other men lunges and Gallagher barks out a laugh, trying to scurry away with four sets of hands clutching onto his uniform. Rust gets out before they turn over a card table, can still hear the cursing from outside once the door has swung shut.

He breathes in the night air, wet enough that he could probably cut the rain free if he reached up and gouged it with his knife. The path back up to the barracks is a ribbon he could follow blind in the dark these days, and he sucks the last drag from his cigarette before pinching it off and flicking the butt somewhere in the muddy earth.

The letter is right where he left it and Rust doesn't hesitate this time when he takes it in hand. He settles on the edge of the bed and slips his finger under the seal, ripping it open. His eyes land on the date before anything else, scrawled there almost two weeks ago.

He feels a strange sort of warmth as he reads through it, a sharp pull somewhere inside him at seeing his name written by this stranger's hand. When he's finished he reads through it again, and then another time for good measure. He remembers the last time someone wrote to him. A child's straggly handwriting, hardly forming words at all, passed across the room followed by a trail of giggles. That was the last time he had attachments, had people worrying for him, wondering about him, holding his well-being as a priority in their lives.

Martin Hart. Rust doesn't know what he looks like but he can almost hear his voice through his words, can almost see a figure stomping off through the thick green grass of Louisiana. Can almost see him writing, chewing on the end of his pencil when the words just won't come. Knowing that somewhere on the other side of the world, in just a matter of weeks, Rust will be reading them.

He knows why he's here. Knows he would have volunteered even if the draft hadn't called, knows he'll fight hard when the time comes but won't try and save himself if death decides to claim him. He imagines Martin again, maybe ten letters back and forth under his belt, waiting on an eleventh that will never come.

Rust sets his jaw and shakes his head, retrieving his ledger from its spot under his mattress before opening to the last unused page. It rips out clean and feels too-light in his hand, but he won’t be the one to weigh it down heavy with empty words that funnel down the road to nowhere.

Light rain finally starts to slant against the roof and Rust fishes a pen from his rucksack, leaning closer to the kerosene lamp burning low between his bed and the next. The word _Dear_ looks strange where he scratches it onto the blank ivory, a lonely sort of farce, four letters without meaning. He doesn’t know Martin, but he writes his name there anyway.

The rest of the response is short enough that he almost feels guilty for wasting a good piece of paper. Martin might think different, looking over the sparse words, but Rust knows this is the only way to keep from letting another good heart down.  
  
  


  
I appreciate your letter but don't feel obligated to send any more. Wasn't meant to be in this program to begin with, and there are plenty of men over here that are much more worthy of your conversation.   
  
Enjoy your farm while you have it. I'm sure it's a much better sight than you'd be seeing if you were heading my way.  
  


   



	2. Chapter 2

Marty catches sight of a familiar truck slowing to a stop alongside his mailbox when he’s out in the front garden, tipping a watering can over the same blooming daylily and bearded iris that was tucked into the earth over a decade ago. He squints across the sunny morning to watch a bundle slide into the box before the man closes it, continuing on his way down the dirt road.  
  
The postal service only makes it out this far two times a week at best, Mondays and Thursdays most of the time, and that’s the way it’s been for as long as he can remember. Not much of anything worth looking at comes to the house these days, with most of his affairs getting taken care of in town. He cancelled his mother's home and garden subscription a month after the accident, has a stack of the faded catalogs still sitting underneath the coffee table. Her delicate handwriting lines the margins of a few dog-eared pages, small notes about a pineapple upside-down cake and perennials she wanted to try planting in the garden beds come spring.  
  
Only three more came after she was gone and Marty sat them in the empty master bedroom, fanned out on the windowsill by her wicker chair like she still might get around to reading them. He only gets bills nowadays for the most part, stray advertisements here and there, sloppy promotions about war bonds that are handwritten and likely passed out to every mailbox across the country.  
  
But today there’s one letter at the back of the stack, a thick parchment envelope that came rerouted through New York, and Marty nearly drops the whole bundle when he sees his name written across the face of it in a slanting hand. His heart stutters somewhere up in his throat while he breaks the seal with his pocketknife and doesn’t even manage to put it away, eyes following the few lines of message lost in a page that’s mostly empty white.  
  
A flush settles heavy on the back of his neck and spreads into his cheeks, a harsh tinge of embarrassment burning through the air. His eyes scan over the words again like he might find another hidden line if he looks hard enough, but the few words there stand out stark and clear.  
  
The rooster crows loud in the yard and Marty looks up, nodding once to himself. He folds his knife back into place and thumbs over the etching on the pearl handle the whole way back to the house, Rustin Cohle’s letter pressed tight against his side. He wasn't expecting any long declaration or any three-page response packed with a lifetime’s worth of stories about the man, but he sure as hell wasn't expecting this either.  
  
He drops the stack of mail, letter and all, onto the couch cushion on his way in, absentmindedly reaching down to scratch Blue's head as he starts toward the bedroom. The letter still clouds his thoughts but he tries to push it away for now so he can get ready to go. Even though it doesn't matter most days, he's made it a routine to be on time when he goes to visit his father. Isn't planning on changing that on anybody's account, especially some far-flung soldier he doesn't know from Adam.  
  
"Come on, Blue," Marty calls, disappearing into his bedroom, calling the dog for no reason save for his company.  
  
He puts on one of his nicer button-up shirts and a pair of slacks, loops a belt through his pants and rubs a smudge out of the metal once he has it clasped. Stands in front of the washbasin and wets and combs his hair down, trying to tame the messy yellow into something more presentable. The brace is hot where the straps tighten below his knee but he can’t really do anything for it, save dust the leather with a little baby powder and pray hard for cooler weather. He heaves a sigh, shifting his jaw back and forth. "Rustin fuckin' Cohle," he mutters to himself, shaking his head as he thuds back downstairs.  
  
Marty goes through the usual routine, checking the house and the land before he leaves it, and fills Blue's food bowl as a distraction before he latches the front door behind him. He chews on the inside of his cheek, yanking open the door to the truck, and the pain in his left leg aches a little sharper than normal when he pulls himself up into the seat.  
  
The drive out to The Home, as Marty’s always called it, feels longer than it really is. He’s made this journey once every other week for the past seven years without many interruptions, rumbling through town and then down the long country road that leads him to the next settlement a good handful of miles away. It’s all one big brushstroke of green Louisiana pasture and marshland until he gets about halfway there, but that one sharp bend in the road will never get any easier to follow.  
  
Something always drips down his spine when he gets close, the cold tendrils from that night trying to claw him back in. They were listening to some country song, the third time it had played on the radio that night and Marty might’ve blinked, might have thrown his head back to howl a tune because next thing he knew the world was ending. Or it had seemed like it—the lights and the deafening sound, screeching tires and a scream ripping through his mother’s throat. Then the pain.  
  
The other car was red. He'd always remember that.

Shannon Henderson was two grades ahead of Marty, and he’d never spoken to her outside the time they’d shook hands over a pew in church during morning greetings and a muttered _’scuse me_ in the high school hallway. She was the mayor’s youngest daughter, born into her mother’s middle age like something other folks might think a miracle, and calling her the prettiest girl in town didn’t hardly begin to cover it. More like if Lafayette ever spawned something to put it bigger and bolder on the map, Shannon Henderson would’ve been it.   
  
She had hair that was so strawberry blonde it almost shined pink in the right light, always set in pretty waves that bounced around her shoulders when she walked and laughed. A red rosebud mouth that didn’t need lipstick or rouge and grey eyes the color of storms that welled up along the coast, and word around town was that if a man wasn’t careful he’d be apt to wreck there.   
  
Marty had seen her graduate, had watched the whole student body rise to their feet to cheer their Valedictorian as she smiled and waved, curtsied in front of her adoring fans like a hometown princess. Shannon was going to be a singer and a star, swore up and down that she would be on the Grand Ole Opry stage one day, and there wasn’t a soul who knew her that didn’t believe it.

Shannon was going places, but Marty never knew where she was going that night.

After it happened, after she reeled into the bridge he’s precariously crossing now and changed both of their lives, no one told him anything about her. Wouldn’t say her name in front of him, as if it was one small part of her they had left to keep sacred. He’d still been in the hospital when the mayor held her memorial and funeral and the nurses in the hall had whispered it was a closed casket, almost like it was a shame. That there was no beauty left to be found in death.

He knew, in his heart of hearts, that Shannon caused the accident. Heard, from some of the people that were still talking to him with their eyes cast down and away, that she’d been drinking, had been going back and forth in that red car for weeks on errands that folks weren’t too keen on looking at so closely. They’d sooner blame him, and that’s what they did. Because Shannon was gone, because his mother was gone, too, and his father was in The Home playing dominoes and staring at an old photo on his bureau day in and day out, always asking the nurse about the two faces smiling back at him.

Marty lets out a breath as he crosses back onto the dirt road, his clammy grip loosening around the steering wheel as he continues on his way.

 

 

The Home is tucked away at the end of a gravel lane behind a long wall of moss-draped southern oak, looming like a white ghost between gaps in the trees. Marty parks his truck in a pebbled lot that might’ve once housed carriages and steps down with care, listening to a songbird call out from where it sits perched high in a ripening peach tree. The fountain in the front garden is trickling as he walks up to the porch, and for now he passes by without pausing to watch the family of orange and speckled koi bob up to the surface with their gaping mouths.   
  
Marty stomps twice on the mat and steps through the front door, almost immediately catching sight of Nurse Gracie Cooper sitting behind the front desk in the foyer. She gets up when she sees him, smiling bright.

“Marty,” she says, taking his hand in hers, soft and white with unpolished nails. “I had a feeling you might show up.”

“Try to keep up a routine,” he says, clearing his throat and locking both arms over his chest as he casts his gaze somewhere toward the main room. “How’s he doing today?”

Gracie smoothes both hands over the hips of her white nurse's dress, the line of her mouth pinching for a moment before falling into a small sigh. “Not the best,” she says, moving to guide him down the carpeted hall as the old floor creaks beneath their weight. “He was talking about the mustard gas again this morning but he’s having trouble remembering much past that.”

They walk through the sunroom, likely a beautiful place in its prime, though now the sunshine falling in through the dusty skylight slants over card tables and wheelchairs and people whose eyes are too cloudy to gaze out the windows. The air here smells strange, always has, something faintly metallic and sickly-sweet. It clings to Marty’s hair and clothes when he goes back home and Blue won’t hardly look at him until he manages to wash it away.

Marty’s father is off in the corner with his back to the room, settled snug in an easy chair. He stares out of one of the floor length windows, one hand resting on the carved wooden handle of his cane. Eric Hart used to be larger than life—he'd bark orders and clap his hands for a younger Marty to catch up with him while they worked the fields, would carry him high on his shoulders and when he was up there Marty felt like he could tug stars down from the sky. His father was something of a legendary figure to him, a real man's man, and his one goal since an early game of remembered catch had always been to make him proud.

Marty weaves around an older woman shuffling around with a ragtag teddy bear clasped against her chest and runs his fingers along every tangible thing he passes in the middle of the room, feels like he's fighting through waves and thunder to reach another sinking ship. He squeezes the edge of the wicker chair when he gets there, coarse and hard under his hands. "Hey Dad," he says, trying to control the waver in his voice. "How you doing?"

Eric blinks a few times and turns away from the window, looking around for the source of the voice until his eyes finally land on Marty. He’s not necessarily an old man, only in his mid-sixties, but his face is deeply lined and his hair long since gone thin and grey. There’s an old white scar high on his right temple that catches the light when he turns, and when he draws both hands into his lap they tremor where they rest.

“Hello there,” he says, clearly caught off guard. “Can I help you, son?”

Marty palms the back of his neck and walks around to stand in front of him. It always startles him, how different his father is now, how he hardly even sounds like himself most days. "Just wanted—wanted to see how you were, sir. Pay you a visit, if I could."

Eric looks him up and down once, shifting in his seat. "Food's awful here. Would take a plate of Deidre's lemon chicken and a slice of her pecan pie over this anytime, even on one of her off days. These people," he grumbles, shaking his head. "Won't even let a man see his own wife."

Marty's heart catches in his throat and he has to turn away for a second, has to bite down on his lower lip to fight the burn behind his eyes. "Sure she'll be around," he says, clearing his throat. "Real soon."

“Let’s hope,” Eric says, settling back into his chair with a grunt. “You ain’t one of those reporters or nothing are you, kid? I done told the people who came before, a man don’t air his old bullshit to the world. Far as I’m concerned, what happened in those trenches is damn well staying there.”

“No sir,” Marty says on an old reflex, easing down on the empty wicker ottoman next to the chair. “Not any kind of reporter.” He doesn’t know what else to say beyond that, but before he can fumble for another string of words Eric is glancing at him again, hazel eyes sparking with something bright for just a moment, a brief flash come and gone.

“You remind me a bit of somebody,” he says. “Might be my boy Martin, when you turn just right. He has the same color eyes—that blue like Deidre’s, you know. But Martin’s only about ten just now, we’ll see if he grows into a handsome young man like yourself.”

Eric sits back and watches Marty in silence before clapping his hands in his lap. “Well son,” he says. “What you got for a name?”

Marty can feel his pulse hammering behind his eyes and knows he can’t say Martin Hart, not today, not when last time his father had started yelling about German spies and overturned a side table holding a serving tray of lemonade. But one name has been ringing in his ears since he picked up the mail this morning and he blurts it out before he even fully thinks it through. "Rustin," he says, a sour taste in his mouth that he pushes through to drop the rest of the lie. “Rustin Cohle.”

His father looks up at him, his eyebrows raised with the smallest hint of a smile playing on his lips. "Rustin?" he repeats. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

Marty laughs then, reaching up to wipe around his eyes before dragging a palm down his face. “Not sure,” he says, shaking his head a little. “Guess my mama was one of them jazz-swinging types.”

 

 

It's rare that Marty actually gets his Dad up and walking around with him, so when they're strolling through the garden behind the big house he's holding his breath the whole time, worried that any minute something could come through and break the moment. They talk about the farm, Marty keeping the finer details under wraps so Eric doesn't know they're talking about the same stretch of land along Sun Place Road. He hears stories he's heard a thousand times and he still laughs like it's the first.

"Goddamn turkey chased me around the house six times," Eric says, grinning when Marty barks out a laugh. "Ran for my life, got my exercise 'til my Mama saw what was happening and scooped me up from the porch. Thing nearly tried to charge inside after me!" They both chuckle, crow's feet pulling up at the edges of Eric's eyes as he remembers. "So there's some advice for you, son. Don't cross a turkey's path, especially within a week of Thanksgiving."

"Duly noted," Marty says, looking up at the house to catch sight of Gracie peering out the window, beaming at them. They meander around to the koi pond and Marty helps his father settle down on the stone bench there, sitting next to him while they watch the fish turn lazily through the water until a dragonfly lights on the surface and a big white one gulps it down whole. "Speaking of advice,” he says after a moment. “What would you tell someone trying to be a good samaritan, but the person he's tryin' to help just ain't having it?"

“How do you mean?” Eric asks, tapping fallen leaves on the pavers with the tip of his cane. “In my experience, seems some men are too proud to take a handout even when they need it most. Reckon you might’ve picked that up by now.”

Marty runs the tip of his tongue along his bottom lip, shaking his head. "This guy, he ain't budging. Don't know why I care so much, guess it just put me off and took me by surprise, his response to a simple bit of politeness. I held out my hand and he pushed it away."

"Then push back," his father declares, with that familiar gruffness that Marty remembers so well and tries to emulate whenever he can. "Some people don't know what they need when they need it. You think you’re in the right, you might be able to convince him."

The wind rustles through the trees around them and Marty heaves a sigh. "You think I should try again? Course, I don’t wanna step past any lines drawn in the sand, you know. S’pose a man’s business is his business."

"Don't think it would hurt,” Eric says. “But some men, Rustin, here’s the thing—they don’t take charity, gotta blaze their own way. And that’s fine and dandy, can’t hold no grievances to err such a man.” He looks to Marty and smiles, then, offering up the barest brush of a wink. “But if you’re a good salesman, sometimes you can convince even the toughest old crow to eat from your palm. Just need to let him think he was searching for your hand all along.”

 

 

"You should come by again, son," Eric says, looking up at Marty as he eases back into the wicker chair by the window. "Best damn conversation I've had around here in a long time."

Marty grins, squeezing his father's shoulder. "I'll be back before you know it. Don't stir up any trouble in the meantime."

"That's up to them," Eric says, shooting a look toward the group of nurses and patients set up in the sunroom behind him, some of the latter mumbling to themselves while others sit milky-eyed and catatonic. "Not me."

Gracie pulls Marty aside in the foyer, a bright smile spreading to the pink apples of her cheeks. "This was good,” she says, pulling her glasses down so they hang from the fine chain around her neck. “He was responding to you so well today, I haven’t seen him this talkative and alert in months.”

“I’m glad,” Marty says, trying not to look down to where her hand is still a warm weight hanging light at his elbow. “It was real good to talk to him, like this. Even if—even if he don’t know me, you know.”

"Well," Gracie says, glancing back at the figure by the window. "Good days and bad days, they all come and go. Next time might be even better."

Marty smiles, the sadness rushing in now and starting to weigh him down. "Til next time, then. Take care."

Gracie watches from the doorway as he climbs up into his truck and cranks the engine over. It coughs and sputters to life, and even as Marty’s driving down the long lane back to the main road he catches sight of her still standing there in the rearview mirror. She waves once like she’d somehow caught him looking before slowly turning back into the house.   
  
He lets the radio play through the open window on the way back home, the cool afternoon air and a steady stream of static song carding like rough fingers through his hair. His mind is wiped clean for most of the ride home, the wind whipping too loud to let him think, and it isn’t until he gets in the farm gate and pulls up in front of the house that the sturdy line of his shoulders bows in and breaks.

Marty cries over all of it, hasn't broken down like this since the early days when it was all still a fresh wound scraped raw. But the tears burn down his cheeks here and now and he can't do anything but let it happen, can't even peel the car door open to go inside and pet his dog.

His father doesn't remember him. His mother is gone forever, gone for good. And some fucking shitheel of a soldier would rather face this war half a world away than scrounge up the words to talk to him, and he knows he’s not really worth the trouble in the grand scheme but somehow that makes it hurt all the worse.

When the tears are scrubbed away and Marty finally manages to slide down out of the truck, he steps through the front door and heads straight for his father’s writing desk, settling in the hard-backed chair with Blue’s head resting on his knee. He doesn’t know how much charity he’s holding out in the palm of his hand, but damn if he doesn’t want to push back.

 

* * *

 

Rust is knee-deep in the rough waves of the ocean, his uniform so wet it bows in and clings to him like a sealskin. His fingertips are wrinkled rough and he's sure his boots are going to house their own oceans when the lieutenant finally calls halt on the exercise. He doesn't know if _too much fucking up_ is a proper military term, but he does know they're gonna hear it bellowed again up close and personal as soon as this whole thing finally crumbles to its knees.

He doesn't seem them passing, doesn't see them getting this right today even if they do it another thousand times. Rust is chilled to the bone even though it was a sunny summer day a couple hours before and his heart sags heavy every time he even thinks about taking another step, boots sunk so far into the wet sand that he wonders if it might swallow him down whole.

All the higher-ups know the troops are going to invade France sometime, they just don't know where or when or how. They've got the general logistics mapped out, the airborne coming from the sky and everyone else loaded up on boats to storm onto the battlefield, but the Germans have every inch of the country held so tight that the Allies can't do anything but brace for every scenario while they figure out a way to pry through the fist of the Third Reich.

But for now the war rages elsewhere while Rust and the rest of his platoon face a stormy beach on the coast of England, torrential rain beating down on their helmets as they prepare to try and take it for the sixteenth time today.

There are makeshift barricades set up under sand dunes and covered in tarp, a different squadron posing as the enemy. Rust knows there's barbed wire under the sand, too, because Marshall squealed when he got caught in a bit of it, jumping and trying to kick it away while the rest of them were trying to settle the beach.

They're holding position in the water for now, waiting for Lieutenant Salter’s signal. Each and every man breathing there under the weight of his weapons and his pack and his gear and his uniform knows they're being made to wait, every passing second adding another pound, another gulp of rain, another clap of thunder that could strike them down like the sitting ducks they are. Rust knows war itself will be a thousand times worse, all their nightmares rolled into one terrifying hellscape of reality, but for now this is the worst thing they can think of. And boiled down to the bare-bleached bones of it all, it all feels like being pressed under the bruising thumb of fear.

The shrill blow of a whistle cuts through the storm and then they’re moving, surging forward through the churning brine with their waterlogged boots trying to suck them down into the surf. Ginger is ten yards down screaming out battle cries like this is the real thing and Rust wants to tear his tongue out of his mouth and choke him with it, thinks he might’ve tried if he were closer, but his hands are halfway numb from the wrist down and all he can do is focus on the distant line of the approaching beach.   
  
He sets his jaw, wants to make it, needs to fucking make it, wishes they could link arms and plow it down. Knows they could be out here all through the night and the break of day tomorrow if they don't make it this time. He's heard things about Salter, stories from men who don't normally string tall tales, and for a moment Rust is struck with the thought of them left here practicing for the rest of the goddamn war, shriveled up like shells of former men in a purgatory that stretches on forever. His ears feel like they’re full of wet cotton but he hears Salter yelling _go go go!_ , nearly trips over Williams next to him as he grips his weapon tight and blinks through the rainwater to surge ahead.

Morales slides up next to him on the right, panting hard with his gun pointed high. "Almost there," Rust hears him shout, a harsh rasp cutting through the loud slap of thunder.

The other squad starts hollering and coming up from their positions, the sand moving beneath them like the rolling muscles of some great beast in waves. He sees the barbed wire a few strides ahead of him and his entire forward path blocked but he doesn't break momentum, doesn't stop. Some of the other guys topple a few feet to his right and maybe if he makes it more will follow him. Maybe he can knock the wire away, loop it around his gun and carry it on with him. The squad posing as the Germans send a roar of laughter down their line and Rust feels adrenaline turning like a knife in his stomach.

"Rust," Morales calls, reaching out to grab for him. But his hand cuts through empty air and Rust keeps going, boots kicking up sand. "What the hell are you—!"

Rust braces himself and leaps over the wire, reaching down to pull it out of the way when the barbing catches on the palm of his hand and yanks him back. The blood is the first warm thing to touch his skin in hours and he'd enjoy the feeling if it didn't hurt so bad. He grits his teeth and sees stars mixed in with the rain, feels another set of hands reaching down and pulling him free.

The push forward has all but stopped and Rust notices he's the farthest along, standing like a deadweight beacon in enemy territory on the other side of the wire. Morales is a few steps behind him, near spread-eagle with one leg on one side of the barricade and one on the other, clutching Rust's bleeding hand between both of his own.

“God damn it, Cohle,” he hisses, wiping some of the water-thinned blood away to try and look at the messy crisscross of cuts. “He’s coming down hard on your ass, now.”

"Stop!" Salter screams, voice cutting like a razor through the commotion in the air. "Fucking stop, right the fuck now!"

Every man halts in his tracks like they’re holding position in a play production, some of them still sprawled like dead men in the sand with others lowering weapons to slap like props against their hips. The rain keeps pummeling down and Salter rips his helmet off, letting it thud into the wet sand while he storms up to where Rust and Morales are crouched on one side of the makeshift barricade.

“In what war effort is it every man for his fucking self, Cohle?” he yells. “You just gonna storm up the beach like Captain fucking America, leave the rest of the men behind to get blitzed to kingdom come? How many fucking times do I have to pound it into your thick skull, when you run, you don’t run for yourself—you run for the fucking team. You're lucky no one has any live ammunition or I'm sure some of them might be considering taking your ass out right now.”

Rust pulls his hand free from Morales’ and slowly climbs to his feet, struggling a little under the weight of his gear until he’s at something resembling full attention. “I was running for the team, sir.”

“Like hell you were,” Salter spits through the rain. “You left every single man behind but Morales, and that’s on account of he’s the onliest motherfucker crazy enough to follow you. If this was the real goddamn deal, how much blood do you think you’d be washing your hands with?”

A steady stream of red is dripping on the sand by Rust’s right boot and he peers down at it, sniffing once before looking back up at Salter. “Just my own as it stands right now, sir.”

“Just your— _just your—?_ ” Salter sputters, the vein in his forehead standing out prominent against his skull. His eyes are bulging as he tears them away from Rust, turning wild on the rest of the men where they look on in stunned silence.

“What in the name of Christ are all you fuckasses sitting around watching?” he shouts, kicking his helmet down the beach. “Surely not Princess fucking Cohle and his papercut. Get up—all of you, get the fuck up! We’re done here.”

The platoon groans out a collective sigh and goes to move further up the shore before Salter blows another harsh note on his whistle. “Not so fast,” he says. “I want three miles run before you go to mess, and if I hear one fucking peep out of anybody tonight I’m coming down on your candy asses like the wrath of God himself. Now go!” He hollers something out to the 'enemy' squad about tearing down the obstacles on the beach before they leave it, and then stomps away from them and crosses his arms over his chest, overseeing the vast disappointments in his charge from his spot high on a dune.

Rust can feel the eyes of every man on him, burning like something caustic through the rain while Morales yanks a handkerchief free from somewhere inside his jacket and knots it around the other man’s palm. “Well, you’re sure running for the team now, Tex,” he says, slapping Rust on the arm before they both turn to start jogging down the beach.

 

 

The water isn’t piping hot but it’s warm enough to beat the blood back to life in Rust’s limbs while he ducks his head under the spray. Showers are cut to five minutes for every man and he makes quick work of lathering soap into his hair, slicking up the rest of his body while the steady trickle rinses his scalp clean.

Rust draws in a breath and stands still for a moment, closing his eyes as the water washes over his torso and legs, the deep ache in his thighs that he's sure he'll carry with him for the next week. He unwinds Morales's handkerchief from around his hand, draping it over his shoulder. He analyzes the wound underneath, the bits of dirt and blood caked there in the upraised skin, ripped open and pulsing with its own heartbeat. He holds it under the water, wincing a bit.

He tries to clutch the seconds as they slip through his fingers, and he raises his face to the water in the last few moments, beads of it clinging to his eyelashes when the shower cuts out.

Morales is already laid out on his bed when Rust walks in, propped up with a copy of what looks like a dirty romance novella if he hedges all bets, the woman on the cover only kept decent by her long black hair and a pair of lacy underwear. Rust drops his towel down to the ground and starts rooting around for his t-shirt and boxers, hearing Morales scoff behind him.

“Moon must be full tonight,” he mutters. “Cover that shit up, Cohle. You see me walking around here buck naked?"

“Thankfully not,” Rust drawls, turning to drop Morales’s damp and blood-stained handkerchief on his bedside table. “Here’s your rag back. Ran it through with some soap in the shower but the blood ain’t coming out.”

Morales takes one look at the handkerchief and swivels his eyes back up to Rust. “Uh, you can hold onto it for now,” he says, resting his book against his chest. “You go see the medic for your hand yet?”

“Naw,” Rust says, pulling his boxer shorts up over his hips before dropping onto his mattress. “Figure I can take care of it myself. Not anything serious enough to warrant ruining Cage’s night.”

“It’s Cage’s fucking job, and if you stub your damn toe he’s obligated to look at it for you,” Morales says, sitting up further against his pillows to watch Rust dig around for his first aid. “Hey, listen—Christ, stop that for a second, let me take another look.”

Morales swings his legs over the side of his own bed and gets up to settle down next to Rust, not saying anything while he pushes the other man’s fingers back to peer at the pink cuts slicing across his palm.

“Pretty shallow for the most part, but that one by your thumb might need a couple stitches,” Morales murmurs, setting Rust’s hand against his thigh to start digging around in the first aid kit. “Was it really worth having Salter that far up your ass?”

Rust’s eyes are somewhere on the floor, hidden under heavy lids. “Wanted to clear a path for the rest of them,” he says. “Thought it’d make the breach a little easier.”

“Won’t be any easier if you go and get yourself maimed in the process,” Morales says, opening up an iodine swab to swipe the brassy-colored liquid over Rust’s palm. “You can’t be so fucking reckless with shit, especially not when we come down to the real line.”

"Sometimes one guy's gotta take a hit to get the others through," Rust says, watching Morales work as he draws in a pinched breath.

"Yeah, well," Morales says, retrieving a roll of gauze from the kit and wrapping it snug around Rust's hand. "Would rather it be a few other people before it's you. So take care of yourself," he says, meeting Rust's eyes with an uncharacteristic note of seriousness.

The barracks door opens and Hughes comes in, bent over and weighed down by the mailbag hoisted high on his back. Morales lets Rust's hand drop and grins at the sight, getting up and easing back down onto his own pillows. "Guess they're finally letting him pass it out," he says, picking up his book again. He flips through the pages, eyes searching for certain words, and they widen when he finds them.

Rust remembers the letter he sent when he sees the mail being doled out to his fellow soldiers and his heart dips at the thought. He watches Hughes struggle with boxes, bundles so stacked they're tied together, and almost every man down the line gets something dropped into his lap. Rust knows he isn't going to be one of them.

"Morales?" Hughes asks, a few steps away from them and a little winded as he sucks in a lungful of air.

"Right here," Morales says, raising two fingers and nodding up at him.

Hughes lets the bag fall off his shoulder and hit the ground, and he reaches inside, pulling out a box wrapped in thick brown paper. He drops it on Morales's bed and sighs. "Must have cost her a hundred dollars to send that thing," he says, retrieving the next batch of letters from the bag.

Morales hoots and rips into it, casting the wrapping aside like a little boy on Christmas morning. "Gotta love her," he says, glancing over at Rust. He peels up the flaps and runs his eyes over the contents. "Got a book in here for you, too. Looks like something about the birds and flowers in England."

"How do you know it's for me?" Rust asks, pulling on his shirt.

Morales raises his eyebrows, a smug smile settling on his face. "Mama knows me better than that,” he says. “And between the two of us, I think we both know who’s got the looks and who’s got the brains.”

He tosses the book over with a little laugh and Rust catches it in his lap with his good hand, noticing the little pink note taped to the embossed cover. _For Rustin_ , it says. _I know he likes to draw outdoors._

Morales pulls out a pound of coffee, a couple bags of tea leaves, some sugar and a few more books more along his lines, two detective novels and one romance, worn around the edges and most likely plucked out of his own room back home. There’s a little bag of saltwater taffy in the bottom and he tears into it without a thought, unwrapping a pink and yellow piece and popping it right in his mouth before throwing an identical one to Rust. The last thing he pulls out is a sheet of paper, looks like it's been torn right out of a legal pad, and every spare sliver of space is filled with x's and o's, a cursive looped _I love you_ adorning the corner.

Rust watches him with a small smile on his face as he twists the candy between two fingers and is shocked out of his reverie by a call of his own name. Both he and Morales look up at the long-suffering Hughes, holding one letter in his hand and peering around the barracks. "Right here," Rust says, a little soft, his eyebrows furrowed. Hughes hands him the envelope and Rust stares down at it, the same familiar name written out in the corner.

Morales is leaning far over, squinting to read it. "Thought you said you put him off?" he asks, voice thick and muffled around the taffy.

"Thought I did," Rust says, a lump rising in his throat.

“Guess he wasn’t gonna let you get away with being a prick,” Morales says, slanting Rust a sideways look. “Well, go on and open it up. Read your verdict.”

Rust slides his thumb under the seal and the envelope comes open in one clean piece. He shifts around to sit cross-legged in his bed, carefully unfolding the enclosed letter one side at a time.

The first thing he notices is that Martin has left out the _Dear_ he'd included last time, and that sets the tone for the rest of the letter, a full minute and a half of Rust chewing harsh on his lower lip.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my mailbox this morning and saw that my goddamn grocery list was longer than your letter. That said, if you want to try and shake a person off in the future, most of the time telling them to take a hike is the last way to get the job done.  
  
Maggie ain't my gal, and she definitely don’t have the time to write to you or anybody else considering she's running herself ragged at the clinic in town these days. But next time I see her I’ll have to try and spread your good will her way. Sure she’ll be happy to know you sent along an answer.   
  
Seems like if somebody put your name in the pot there must’ve been a probable enough reason to do it, and I don’t see how any of the other fighting men would more or less worthy of the cause. So I’m writing out into the blue ether here, and I guess it’d be good to hear a little about who the hell I’m talking to. Attach a narrative to the name and all, if you’d be so obliged.   
  
I do enjoy my farm, wouldn’t lead you or anyone else to believe otherwise for a second. It’s a lot of work for one man but I make do and manage what I can. Midsummer harvest will be coming up quick and then I got a mare due for foaling in a couple weeks’ time, should be a nice colt out of her if I’m lucky. The little ones always make a nice change of pace around the yard.  
  
Suppose I’ve penned enough to a man who probably won’t write back, so I’ll cut this one short. Not exactly expecting another answer now, come to think of it, but I didn’t want to leave off on your last note.

 

"Goddamn," Morales says, laughing a little bit and leaning back over into his own space. "You sure do make an impression on people."

Rust heaves a sigh and continues to stare down at it. The letter is forged with a hearty sense of disappointment that Rust can feel for miles, a strong-willed man cut down for trying. He squeezes the corner of the paper and rumples it, running his thumb over its texture. His ears are burning hot and he's sure Morales will comment on it if he sees, a red flame coursing through him and flushing his cheeks.

The man seems genuinely hurt and Rust can't really place why. It wasn't his choice to write to begin with, was doing it out of some sort of obligation to this Maggie woman and Rust blinks, trying to work through it. This blatant defiance, a last ditch effort to draw Rust in and get him to talk even though Martin seems sure he won't answer despite his best efforts.

And that's what gets him, what sinks the hook in. The raw sort of emotion there, that basic need for human interaction that he feels himself sometimes even though he'd never admit it. This man, alone on some farm waiting for a foal to be born. Him and his animals. Rust wonders how far he is from town, how often he sees his friend. How old he is, what twisted up his leg, why he’s decided to live on his own. Rust knows this man has got him now even though he might not want him anymore. The curiosity has dug itself in. Rust wants to know.

Funny, how far a little persistence can go.

Rust shifts on his bed and reads the letter again. After everything, Martin still wishes him the best of luck. His heart sinks, knowing he might have hurt someone that was already lonely, already stuck living in a world apart from everybody else. Rust lets out a breath, wonders if he'll be able to salvage this.

"You gonna write him back?" Morales asks, two pieces of taffy in his mouth now instead of one.

"Yes," Rust says, resolute.

"Well go get that cut stitched up,” Morales says, watching Rust rise from the bed and start stepping into his boots. “Don't think a letter stained with blood is gonna make the best second impression."

 

 

Cage knots the last of three sutures in the delicate skin between Rust’s thumb and forefinger, sitting back to push his spectacles up further on his head. “You’re all set,” he says, snapping one rubber glove off after admiring his work. “One for each mile you bunch ran today.”

“You heard about that?” Rust murmurs, flexing his hand to test the stitches.

“Whole goddamn camp heard about that,” Cage says, biting into his lip with a knowing grin as he gets up to start tidying the area. “Salter was in a downright fucking state. Thought he was gonna give himself an aneurism, way he was going off in the lieutenant mess.”

“Mmm, shame,” Rust says under his breath, climbing to his feet and sliding one finger across his brow as he goes to leave the lamplit medic tent. “Appreciate it, doc."

"Ain't a real damn doctor, Cohle," Cage says, closing a drawer. "Just some guy from Detroit wondering how the hell he got here."

Rust leaves him on that note and starts his trek back to the barracks, pulling a cigarette from behind one ear while he navigates around sloughs of mud to follow the narrow path. It’s full dark out now and he blows a silver cloud of smoke up into the night, ignoring the tight rumble growling in the hollow of his stomach. Most of the other men have already gone down to supper and he’ll show up at last call more likely than not, but for now he’s rolling around spare words he might be able to scrawl on a piece of paper. He finds he's got more questions this time around but doesn't want to make Martin's head spin.

Rust still has the same qualms. Knows he could easily go into the history books as one in a long line of anonymous dead soldiers once they land in France. But he feels a tug now he didn't feel before, and he's always been one to trust his instincts.

Back in bed and mostly alone in the barracks, he pulls his notebook from its spot under the mattress and opens it in his lap, flipping to another free page near the back. He holds the pen between his teeth for a moment, staring at another wall of blank ivory. This one he’ll try to fill it up a little more than the last. Feels like he's got to make it count if he wants to get another response back.

Rust touches pen to paper and starts writing, vaguely wondering why he’s always tried not to care when he’s only ever cared too much.

 

Apologies for cutting the last letter short. Just didn't think you would want to waste your time on someone like me, but if you're dead set then I should be around to answer.   
  
Friend named Tony Morales put my name in the program, seems more like he was expecting women to send photos that I'd be willing to share. In all honesty, I'd prefer conversation to a couple pictures that'd get snatched away soon as they leave the envelope.   
  
How long have you had the farm? Or been tending it alone? Good luck with the new foal, suppose a lot of work goes into raising them up right. Can't imagine it'd be any harder than dealing with a real baby. You got a lot of animals up there? What kinda crops you sell?   
  
As for me, there ain't much to tell. I'm 23 years old, born in Texas and raised in Alaska. Been here in England for a little over a month now. Was one of three men not to puke my guts out on the way over. Ain't got any family back home. My Pop still might be in Alaska, but I haven't heard from him in around five years.

Hope I didn't put you off before. Don't let your friend run herself too ragged, she sounds like a real good woman.  


 


	3. Chapter 3

  
The last step at the foot of the stairs bows under with the weight of eight years’ worth of stomping, the smooth groove there worn heavy through lacquer and wood in the shape of something that might resemble a man’s size-ten work boot. Marty watches it come into bleary focus as he takes the steps one at a time with a hand trailing down the bannister, tells himself to not let his left foot drag and grazes the last step with the steel stirrup of his brace anyhow.

Daylight is already beating bright along the eastern wall of the house and he’d blinked awake with a jolt two hours past feeding time, sweat-damp with his heart thudding like a distant hammerfall high in his chest while Blue snuffled out a hot breath in his face. Now, standing in the kitchen and fumbling black grounds into the coffee pot with a sugar spoon, a familiar beat aches behind his eyes and throbs in the knotted scar of nerves twisting around his bad knee.

There’s two mouthfuls left of something hard and piss-yellow sitting in a tall bottle on the kitchen table, and he remembers the burn of it going down alongside the low country croon of some sad woman on the radio, but then the sun had slipped under the shoulder of the earth and he must’ve sunk low right along with it.

Blue huffs out a quiet bark from by the front door and Marty claps the lid back on the coffee tin, thumbing on the machine as he turns to shuffle toward the screen door. "I'm on it, buddy,” he murmurs, dragging a hand through his hair so it stands up in shocks of errant yellow. “Late start for all of us."

Marty spares the Jameson bottle a sidelong glance and heads over to where his companion moves impatiently from foot to foot, tail thumping faster as Marty unlatches the screen door and pushes it out into midmorning. Blue takes a galloping leap off the porch and is gone like a wayward shot before Marty can even get down the stairs, run off to make his early rounds with the azalea bushes and goat pen.

The horses and cows aren't too harried but Lily comes to say good morning a little quicker than usual, still as pregnant as the full white moon, pushing her velvet nose to nuzzle against Marty's neck. He’d stepped outside in nothing but his boots and his boxers and her whiskers tickle while she snuffles a breath into the hair above his ear, a warm rush of damp meadow grass and alfalfa. Marty pushes easy against her side while she crowds up around the feed bins, swishing her tail and nickering when Rosco slowly ambles up from the paddock to poke his greying head through the barn door.

“Get back, lilybird,” Marty says, clapping his metal scoop against the side of the grain bin before tossing a few handfuls of sweet feed into the mare’s bucket. "Know you're eatin' for two." He lines up Rosco’s breakfast in another pail and hauls them both out in the crook of one elbow, stopping short to throw the sister cows their feed in an old bathtub set up along one side of the barn.

Once the horses are nose-down in their buckets Marty takes a moment to sit on the stump of an old oak he'd had to cut down a couple storms back, his boot heels swinging a bit where they don’t quite brush the ground. The sun bears down and warms every inch of exposed skin, kissing the smooth white of his chest that rarely sees the light of day. He already feels the heat settling in his bones and he turns his face to the sky, closing his eyes as he lets the buttery light wash over him.

Two nanny goats bleat at him from behind the nearby fence and Marty looks down at them, a few of the younger kids wandering up to join in with their long-eared heads poking through the planking. He leans over, holding out his hand as they take turns nudging into it, scratching along the white star thumb-pressed into the newest baby’s forehead.

"What?" he asks, a smile playing on his lips as he raises his eyebrows. "Y'all are hungry too?" He clicks his tongue and gets back to his feet, walking around to open the little gate to their nighttime pen. "Can't be, I fed you guys last week."

Once the goats are munching through a bale of hay in the paddock and the horses and cows have wandered back to cooler air under a shady oak in the pasture, Marty scoops a heap of grain into a spare burlap sack and walks along the little stone path that’ll lead him to the chicken coop where it’s tucked closer to the garden. The weight of early summer is already bearing down in a hot haze but a warm breeze comes and goes through the valley with teasing fingers, stirring the half-rusted chimes hanging from the back corner of the house.

He hears the birds clucking faintly as he gets closer, and though the sound kicks a bit of pep into his step it also jimmies a dusty memory loose.

A milder morning than this and he must’ve only been three or four years old, back when the farm seemed like the entire earth instead of just one small plot stitched into it. His mother was wearing a long purple dress, rippling around her ankles with the weight of the brown earth that had been caught there. She held one of Marty's hands in hers and sprinkled a bit of chicken feed into the other, motioning with her chin toward the hens as she urged him closer. He was face to face with them then and they seemed a lot bigger, like strange, feather-covered dinosaurs that tilted their heads when they saw him coming, blinking their black drop eyes. _Don't be scared_ his mother had said, smiling while they pecked seed from the palm of his hand. _They're just a bunch of girls._

Blue is sitting vigilant in front of the henhouse door when Marty steps into view, a grey-marbled statue with his black nose turned toward the air. The dog stands and trots around to sniff the perimeter when he sees Marty coming, and it isn’t until he slings the feed sack over one shoulder and lets out a low whistle that he sees the feathers scattered in the grass.

All that’s left of the little hen is one wing and a flurry of red feathers, left right at the edge of the coop like she’d been snared and pulled through the chicken wire. Marty kicks dirt over the blood spattered on the ground and lets out a low swear, squatting down to finger the place where the wire had been rended open wider.

“God damn it,” he says with a long sigh, standing to look around for the shovel leaning against a post in the garden. “Every time.”

Marty makes short work of burying the wing under a patch of earth where his mother kept Louisiana iris and then heads back over to the coop where the chickens are huddled together in the far corner, a few heads peeking out from their nesting boxes.

“Morning ladies,” he says in a solemn sort of voice, scattering feed in the dirt to slowly draw them out of hiding. “Condolences for our loss.”

The little black and speckled hens are soon back to their usual rigor, clucking and scratching around his boots while they mind their newest brood of chicks. He looks down on them now, a whole different generation from the one tucked inside the memory with his mother, one he’s raised up and hatched all his own. They look the same as the ones from before outside being smaller than his younger mind recalls, except he's alone with them now, without the reassuring weight of purple cloth whipping around him like a shroud and gentle hands keeping him held close.

Marty chews on the inside of his cheek, tossing the last handful of feed down before twisting the empty burlap between his hands. He bends to peer at the place where the wire had been twisted loose again and runs a hand through his hair, catching Blue’s eye where the he’s been watching from a safe distance in the yard.  
  
“Breakfast first,” he says, edging out the coop’s wooden door and whistling through his teeth for the dog to follow him through the wild-growing garden. “Then we’ve gotta figure out this vermin problem on our hands.”

  
  
  
  
Back in the kitchen, Marty pours his first cup of coffee and drinks it standing in front of the sink, watching a pair of sparrows flit around the honeysuckle ivy through the window. He’s still only in his boxers and boots and reaches down to thumb along the cotton waistband, gone a little damp where it’d been pressing against the small of his back. Blue has been sprawled out in front of the kitchen table but Marty feels a wet nose press against the back of his left knee and looks down into a pair of chocolate eyes peering up at him.

"Lemme guess," Marty says, thumbing around his mouth. "You wanna eat too?"

Blue barks his response and Marty chuckles as he turns away from the sink. "Ain't you gettin' tired of this kibble shit, Blue?" he asks, opening the cupboard and pulling out a half-empty bag of dry dog food. He shakes the food into the bowl and watches the dog leap at it, barely taking a breath between bites. "Guess not," Marty sighs, picking up his mug before dropping down into the closest kitchen chair.  
  
The smell of fresh-brewed coffee still wafts through the air and he sucks the taste of bitter-black down deep in his lungs while bread browns in the toaster oven. He grips the blue handle of his father’s old mug and pours more of the dark liquid into it, stirring in a few sugar cubes and a drop of milk before gulping down the welcome burn.

Marty watches Blue eat, the old wood floor creaking some under their weight, and tries to ignore the Jameson bottle where it still sits in plain view. It’s easier to dodge during the daylight hours but he always finds himself circling the drink at night, alone and listless with only the old radio and the house settling around him for company. More often than not the days always stretch like vast planes before him, a slow tide of minutes and hours he has to fill in one by one.  
  
Sometimes the ceaseless march of time catches up with him, makes him realize that this is how it is now, how it probably always will be. His mother gone for good, his father too far lost in the wasteland of his own broken mind to ever come back. He'll never meet anyone to fill in the empty spaces, won't ever see the day where he carries Maggie over the threshold in a white lace dress to start making this her home, too. He’ll spend the rest of his days toiling in the dirt under the heavy slap of the hard Louisiana sun, keeping lonely company with a hound dog and a herd of barnyard animals, working this same plot of tired land until he falls face-first into it and doesn’t get back up again.

Marty doesn't think about Ted Sawyer and his mountains of money or his shiny white car. Not all the pairs of eyes in town that turn the other way when he passes by or the rush of memories that use every other moment as the means to drown him. He especially doesn't think about some rogue-shouldered soldier a million miles across the Atlantic, folding Marty's last response and stuffing it into the nearest trash bin. Sure as shit hasn't been thinking about that mistake since the day he licked a stamp and put it in the mailbox, not that or anything else.

Sometimes he can't stand the quiet, can't take the house standing still and him standing with it, so he falls into the rigor of clockwork motion and gets to work. Today is one of those days. He finishes the rest of his coffee and rushes through a few pieces of toast slathered thick with butter before getting dressed, pulling on a pair of worn jeans and a white shirt too grease-stained to ever be mistaken for new.

Blue follows Marty back out to the hens’ coop, long tail wagging lazy as he sniffs along a winding path on the ground that leads right back to the spot where dirt had been kicked over the blood earlier in the morning. Marty drops his toolbox and another roll of chicken wire and plops down in front of the breached wall, pulling the broken section free with a few quick snips of his wire cutters.

The hens go about their business while he works, some of them panting in the shade and rolling around in the dirt for a dust bath. Sweat gathers between Marty’s shoulder blades and slides down his back, trailing low like a tickling fingertip while he reaches up to wipe his forearm across his brow. He twists a new section of wire in place and then doubles up two layers one on top of the other, digging a little trench with the garden trowel to bury the bottom half before wedging a flat wooden board in place for a stronger buttress.

It doesn’t look like the prettiest job when he’s done, but it's fine enough to keep something from pulling his best birds through the wire one at a time until he’s got nothing left but the old barnyard rooster. Once the coop’s been mended he takes Blue on a scout around the garden, looking for prints and any other tracks that might’ve been left pressed in the dirt.

There’s no sign of anything out of order aside from the ravaged hen and Marty runs through a list of potential culprits in his mind, counting them off one hand while he stands over his tomato and pepper plants with a watering can in the other, tipping the roots a much-needed drink. Coyote would be savage enough to leave the mess, but he hasn’t seen one out this way in the handful of months since putting a bullet through the last one that starting showing up around the goat pen. Signs could point to opossum, chicken hawk, owl, some sly red wisp of a fox. Even a masked raccoon, considering they’d have the tiny-thumbed paws to pull a bird through the wire.

Sometimes Marty asks himself why he bothers with mending and seaming and fixing what’s broke, what the point of it all is when he and everybody else will be ashes to dust again someday. One more hole in the fucking ground, that’s what he’s got to look forward to. Knows he's still young yet but sometimes he would rather it happen sooner than later, just to get it over with.

Eric and Deidre Hart would have never raised their son to think that way. Marty grew up following his mother and father to church every Sunday with his sun-bleached hair parted and combed down slick with pomade, buttoned up into a jacket that always hugged too-tight around his shoulders. The preacher man always talked big about Jesus and Sin and Eternal Damnation, about the kinds of things man or woman could and should do to secure their spot in the Final Paradise, but he never cracked open his bible and touched on how a man was meant to occupy all his time not spent running come hell or high water from sinning.

Marty wades through his chores one by one while he thinks, feels like he's been going through his life almost mechanically, only ever focused and determined on the task burning blisters into his hands. He tries to track the steps of all the feet that have walked this land he calls his own, all the ones he knows of anyhow.   
  
The Hart line has owned this plot along Sun Place Road for three generations, starting back when old Nicolas Hart himself had swung down out of his flatbed wagon and finally settled the contract. The red paint on the barn was new back then, wasn't chipping and sun-faded, and the ground quaked under horse hooves when Nicolas would race his sons with his favorite mare through the open pastures, spotted and brown and gleaming in the sun. He never let them win.

There was a time Marty used to bring his friends home when he was in high school, back when he had more than Maggie left to call a friend. Davey Johnson and Carl Hemmer, freckle-faced and gangly, the both of them. They'd help him do his chores and take care of the animals in the slow-straggling summer evenings before going for a dip down in the pond, said their prayers at the very dining room table that's still inside to this day. Carl sold real estate before he went off to jump as a paratrooper in the war and Davey worked at the local auto mechanic until he packed his bags and headed somewhere north with a redheaded gal named Kitty Sue, and Marty hasn’t heard nary a word from either of them since the accident.

When Shannon Henderson died, turns out she took most of Marty’s life with her.

The sun sits in a different place in the sky now, orange rays casting across his legs and glinting  off the metal ribbons of his brace. He’s been wrapping a stake in a plot of earth in the garden and catches sight of Blue's paw prints in the dirt mixing with a few of his own, signs that anyone else had ever been here long since kicked up and scattered to the wind.

Another human being hasn't heard his voice in something verging on a week now. Next time he goes to see his father the man might not even look him in the eye, might ask him if he's trying to sell insurance like he did the last time. Any words he lets loose at The Home fly off into the void and might as well not have been said at all. Marty stares at the paw prints on the ground and his heart twists in his chest, knowing that if he died out here nobody would fucking know for God knows how long. Kevin Burkis four miles down the dirt road might stop by looking for a part or some such, find his body at the bottom of the stairs or getting picked clean by buzzards in the barn floor. If he even bothered to come inside at all.

He's startled back to reality when Blue lets out a low bark. Marty's eyes travel down the lane and he sees the mail truck sliding up alongside his box, the man with the mustache who usually comes by opening it and stuffing something inside. Marty blinks away the harsh strain in his eyes and can hardly move from the spot, doesn't even know if he wants to. But the dog makes the decision for him, taking off full-tilt towards the truck and kicking up dirt as he goes.

"Blue!" Marty calls, his voice ragged. "What the hell're you—get back here, damn it!" He knows his dog is fast and the idea of the mail truck hitting him as it goes on its way is almost enough to make Marty keel over and lose his lunch right then and there.

He hobbles after him as fast as he can, left knee screaming enough to put stars behind his eyes and for a moment it feels like it's going to slide slipshod right out of place. The truck is gone when he makes it to the box and Blue is sitting obediently next to it, his tongue out and his tail wagging.

"You tryin' to kill me?" Marty asks, breathless and bracing his hands on his hips. The dog tips his head to the side and Marty does his to match, heaving a sigh as he opens the mailbox. “I’ll have to knock some sense into you yet.”

All the fluff and advertisements are still there, piled underneath a small hand-addressed envelope. He narrows his eyes at it and is sure he must be reading it wrong, the empty air in his ears as he holds it up to examine it closer.

It’s the last thing he expected and the one thing, against his own good sense, that he was really hoping for.

He opens it the same as he did last time, slipping his pocket knife under the seal. The paper is thick but worn around the edges, handled by another set of hands before arriving in his own. The letter is a bit longer than the last and written in the same thin-slanted print, dated just around two weeks ago.

An apology. Actual questions about himself. Bonafide information about whoever the hell this guy might be. And the postscript, _You can call me Rust, if you want._ Marty finds himself grinning, eyes scanning over the words again. The whole conversation with his Dad, his last ditch effort in pushing back. It actually worked.

The doom and gloom thoughts that had been plaguing him before abate somewhat, and though the last letter still stings he's surprised at how much he wants to jump on this one. He knows that any passive aggressive ideas about making the guy wait would only be hurting himself and decides the sooner he gets a response out this time, the better.

"Come on, buddy," Marty says, starting back towards the house with a wince before patting his palm on his thigh. Blue gets up and trots alongside him, and the sun hasn’t quite dropped below the rim of the western sky but he figures he’s good as done for the day, the only chore left to feed himself and the animals before dusk.

The knot of nerves still aching in his bad knee decides supper can wait when he catches sight of himself in the foyer mirror, sweat-damp and smudged with a fine layer of dirt. Marty unlaces his boots and toes them off by the door, walks back out onto the porch while Blue watches from his perch on the welcome mat. He strips his jeans and work shirt off and leaves them tossed over the railing before walking barefoot through the front garden to where the old water pump is, once painted red but long since sun-cracked and peeling.   

A few good pumps get the cool well water gushing forth from the ground and he rinses off his arms and good leg, absently keeping the brace from getting too wet while his mind starts straying to the words penned by Rustin Cohle. Marty's idea of Alaska had always been like some fucked-up frozen fantasy land, igloos and mushers racing wild across the snow-topped tundra. Louisiana gets chilly in the winter but not much more than that, and he can't imagine how someone who was born in the sun-fired heat of Texas could be brought up in such a cold slice of earth.

Marty wonders how old Rust was when he left Alaska as he slows the water pump and treks back up to the house, wonders about the father he hasn't seen in umpteen years and the mother he hasn't mentioned. And comparing the foal to a real baby? Marty chuckles to himself, shaking his head.

He calls Blue inside before latching and locking the door behind him, leaving his stack of mail in the kitchen before making the slow and steady climb up the staircase to the sole bathroom at the end of the hall. It’s decorated just the same as his mother left it, walls half-tiled with turquoise green and a free-standing tub and sink to match. He reaches behind the wraparound curtain to twist on the hot water and then plugs up the drain, dropping down on the toilet lid to start unbuckling the leather straps on his brace.

Three brass buckles come undone until the metal slips free and Marty’ll always hate this ritual at the end of every night despite how good it feels to get the damn thing off. Hates how he’ll never walk further than the kitchen without the burden of a never-ending nightmare strapped around his gimp leg, hates even more the things he sees when the brace is lying like a carcass on the tiled floor and there’s nothing left to hide what’s underneath.

The car never caught fire in the accident but you wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise, looking at the mottled patchwork of pink scar tissue that warps half his left leg. The scarring starts a palms’ width above his knee and the doctor did what he could to mend the busted bones there but the splintered fragments were too small and too many, and when the cast had come off the x-ray on the wall had looked like it was peppered full of white buckshot.

The crash had turned the front wheel well of the car into a can opener and Marty’s calf had seen the worst of that. A sharp piece of metal cut into the jut of his left hipbone and he thought it would never stop bleeding, the memory of that feeling forever branded there with a jagged scar.

He reaches down to press his thumbs into his kneecap, massaging at some of the aching tension welling under the skin. Steam is clouding above the bath now and he eases to his feet, grimacing as his leg straightens back out before pulling his undershirt over his head. It lands on top of the brace, blocking it from view. His boxers come next and Marty wipes a stray smudge of dirt off his elbow, catching a glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror.

Before the accident he'd always been happy with his appearance, had just as much confidence and heavy-hipped swagger as any member of the football team and could weave stories a lot easier than most. Girls would make eyes at him in the school hallway and through their windows at the drive-in and he never had much trouble drawing them in closer, long and lean as he was. Helped that he always knew what to say, charming them with the sparkle in his eye and the little gap between his teeth. _That’s a grin full of good luck_ his mother used to laugh, reaching up to touch Marty’s face when he smiled.

But that wreck of a night must have taken that from him too, because odds are women who don't even know him turn the other way when they see him coming now. Any of the golden charm he may have been keeping in his pocket went bad and turned to ash from lack of use and his overhead curse. Last time a girl saw him anything close to naked was a few months back—Christine Dunn, the bottle-dyed redhead that worked the front desk at the beauty salon, with her painted eyes and pouty mouth. They crossed paths at the darkest bar in town and wound up at the motel across the street. She bit his lip till he bled, laughed at all the wrong times, wouldn't pick up the phone a few days later when he was desperate enough to call.

And ain’t that the way it usually goes.

Marty cuts a lonely figure but the mirror fogs over before he can think about it too hard and he moves over to the tub, reaching down to slow the water to an easy trickle. It’s piping hot and he hisses as he sinks back into the bath with his thighs already flushing pink from the broiled heat, but the water does wonders on his knee and soon enough he’s sighing content, slumped down loose and languid against the warm porcelain.

He hears familiar nails against the wood outside the door and smiles to himself. Blue starts to whine and keeps scratching, one tawny paw opening the door just a crack.  "You can come in, buddy," Marty says, tapping his hand on the edge of the tub. "C’mere, Blue."

The door opens all the way then and Blue trots inside, his tail wagging as he surveys the scene.

"Why you always askin' permission when I'm taking a bath but you wander right in when I'm on the john, huh?" Marty asks, reaching out to scratch around the dog’s black velvet ears. “Go on and lay down.”

Blue turns in a few circles on the mat in front of the sink before flopping down with a sigh, stretching out long on his side. Marty feels a strange sort of contentment that hasn't set foot around these parts in a long time and he closes his eyes as he leans back, letting it wash over him. His mind wanders for a bit before it strays back to the envelope he left downstairs, to the soldier who wrote it and who he’s turning out to be as his story stretches further down the page.

Twenty-three years old and handing his life over to the country like a time card, something that might be punched out early or at the end of a long shift. Rust seems to think that he ain't good enough, that he's a waste of time, just something stuck on the bottom of the bigger machine’s boot. Marty doesn't know if this guy just prefers to be alone or actually believes all that martyrized bullshit. Both, maybe. Whatever it is hurts Marty’s head to think about.

He presses his tongue against the point of one tooth, brow furrowed as he mulls it over. "What should we say, Blue?"

The dog cracks one eye open before stretching his hind legs out further, and that’s about as much input as Marty figures he’s going to get. He leans forward and palms the water off before dunking his head underwater, coming back up to start lathering shampoo into his hair as he runs a few lines.

"Think I might disagree that talking to you is a waste of time," Marty mutters, closing his eyes tight as a few suds slide down his forehead. He chews on his lip, his fingers digging into his scalp. "Don't think you should call yourself a waste of time—" He sighs, shaking his head. "Christ Almighty."

Rust was given to him, placed in his hands when Maggie slid his information across the table. He might not have picked him, if he was given the choice, but sometimes the things you want aren't the same as the ones you need. It feels like he's got something that's his, separate from the work and crippling loneliness of everyday life. A real goddamn thing to support that isn't the farm he tends to or the dog that sits at his feet. A soldier who just might need some kind of link back to the real world, something outside the roar of war even though he wouldn’t ever be one to admit it to himself.

Marty watches the bathwater go murky with soapsuds and dirt, scrubs his skin until it’s balmy pink and pulls the drain stop at the bottom of the tub. He stands from the bath and towels off as the sweat and grime from all his hard work swirls around his ankles, the slow spiral of another day slipped down the drain.

The world might be full of chances and split hairs of fate, but he isn’t so sure about luck. Rust Cohle snagged Marty’s line with a bite of rejection, of all things. But he bit the hook and took the bait, and Marty figures all he can do now is hold on tight and start reeling.

Despite everything, he never was one to back down from a challenge.

 

  
* * *   
  
  


“Fox Company!” Salter barks, stepping up onto a wooden crate that’s been dropped down in the drying mud surrounding the barracks. “Your undivided attention, if you please.”   
  
It isn't his usual snap of _Ten hut!_ but the men still stand rigid in their boots, going quiet as they gather closer around, squinting up at the lieutenant through the early afternoon sun pouring around them. He’s a head shorter than most of the guys on a good day and the crate doesn’t do much to help his cause, only the top half of his cap visible from where Rust is standing near the back of the group.

“Luckily,” Salter calls out, “your latest screw-up courtesy of Private Cohle was documented a little over two weeks ago, which makes that a new personal record for the second platoon. Congratulations on keeping your shit square and spare.”  
  
Rust made sure to linger at the rear for this very reason, knew full-well that if he’d been anywhere else all fourteen pairs of eyes would be drilling holes into the back of his head like machine gun fire. The platoon’s last batch of weekend passes had been revoked in his name after the same botched take on the stormy beach that left him with three stitches in his hand, and he hadn’t heard the end of their murmured curses and mutterings of _Tax Man_ for nearly a fortnight. Here and now, Morales at his left is the only one who has an eye on him, sliding a look over from under his cap while the corner of his mouth curls up crooked on one side.

Salter raises his chin an inch and clasps his hands behind his back. “Since you pigeons have somehow managed to toe the line in the meantime, and since I’m feeling mighty generous in light of all this beautiful English sunshine, I won’t be revoking any passes this weekend. To cut a long story short, it seems you bunch have lucked the fuck out.”

A jeep wheels around the corner, the back seat full to the brim with bulging mail bags. Hughes sits shotgun, exasperation already painted across his face, and starts working the bags out of the truck and onto the ground once the driver comes to a full stop. Salter turns around, chuckling when he catches sight of the scene before he faces them again. "Help Hughes gather all your shit and then whoever wants to use their pass can head out. Don't make any trouble, be back at 2300 hours or so help me I'll come out there and drag you back by the ear myself."

He nods, eyes cast steely across the group. "Dismissed."

The men start to go their own way, the jeep blowing up dust as it retreats in the direction it came. Hughes squints down at his burden and Rust does too, feeling the unexpected navel-tug urge to move over there and help him.

Morales smacks him in the arm, snorting. "Looks like you've just about had a stroke."

“Fourteen sidearms in the group and every one of them’s got a reserved bullet with my name on it,” Rust murmurs, stepping through a puddle on his way to Hughes. “You'd look the same if you were standing in my boots."

Morales strides along with him, holding his head high. "If I were you I wouldn't have leapt over the damn wire to begin with." They stop a few paces from where Hughes is buried up to his shoulders in the mail bag, watching as some of the others pick through letters and packages.

"This sorted any particular way?" Rust asks, one finger brushing over heavy burlap that he can feel rasping coarse over the edges of his teeth. All kinds of different handwriting, so many names. The postage stamps alone could fill a rough-hewn rainbow, might as well be one from every state and then some. Rust looks at them all and tastes the glue, the water-bled ink, the earthy taste of red lipstick pressed along the seals.

"It _was_ ," Hughes says, settling down in the grass and shooting a look at Gallagher, already with a big pile in his hands that sure as shit doesn’t all belong to him.

The other guys wander over and eventually two start off with bags for Ace and Crow company, the rest from Fox showing up and waiting, the chatter growing as each man gets matched with his mail.

Rust twists his heel in the dirt and makes a groove there, something kicking like a rabbit foot in the pit of his stomach every time another name is called. Martin might have gone to town and picked out another name. Might be writing to some doe-eyed nurse in Italy now, Rust's own name and temporary address all but forgotten.

Morales's name is called and the letter passed back into his hands. The writing isn't his mother's, Rust has seen her looping cursive enough to know better, but the other man’s face splits into a wide grin all the same when he sees it.

“Little Joey!” he crows, struggling to get his thumb under the seal before ripping into it. “My kid brother, imagine that. Hasn’t forgotten about his old fratello yet.”

Rust can't help but feel a smile pull around the edges of his mouth, watching his friend’s eyes scan rapidfire down the letter. Morales peeks into the envelope when he's finished, finding a handful of baseball cards and something else, thick ivory paper folded carefully into a square. He lets it unfurl like an accordion and his breath catches in his throat, eyes lighting up when the long, supple legs of a golden-haired bombshell are spread out on the poster in front of him.

“Who is it this time?” Rust asks, now watching Hughes from beneath his lashes. “Cheesecake flavor of the month.”

“Miss July,” Morales says with eyes only for the pinup, wolf whistling through his teeth. “Check out the gams on this broad, baby. I’d let her ride me like a circus pony.”

"Jesus, Tony," Rust says, dipping his head down. "You're a goddamn—"

"Cohle!" Hughes says, holding out an envelope that's slightly smaller than the one Morales is still clutching, and he knows as soon as he sees the yellowed white that it’s the same stationery that’s come his way two times prior. And only one person’s been writing.

Rust's heart leaps in his chest and he nudges between Gill and Farve, reaching out to snatch it before anyone else gets a chance to press their oily fingerprints into the paper. "That's me," he says as clear as a struck bell, and a wave of muttering moves through the crowd as he eases back out of it, letter held safe in his hand.

 _Martin Hart_ is scrawled in the top left corner and Rust gazes down at it, his thumbs smoothing over the edges. Morales slides up alongside him, their shoulders bumping as he stares down at the envelope in Rust's hands.

"Well, would you look at that," Morales says, slapping Rust on the back. "Guess you went and redeemed yourself."

More names are called out as they start to walk away but the muttering continues, and Rust catches something about _Louisiana address_ and _you see the name?_ He thinks about tearing it open right here on the spot, racing through the words with a fervent hunger he hasn't felt in a while, but he keeps it closed, so hot in his hand now that it’s a wonder the edges haven’t caught fire and singed black. He tucks it into his rucksack, holding it a little closer to his body, and Morales scoffs before picking up his pace.

"Let's get a move on, Tex. I’ve been cooped up in the stable for too long and it’s high time to smell some of those pretty English roses."  
  


 

The closest town is a little over a half-hour away and the whole platoon piles into the transport trucks, most of them decked out in full uniform and desperately trying not to get too many creases in their jackets. Morales plops down in the only other empty spot next to Rust and pushes his cap back, sliding him a wayward smirk.

“Don’t clean up too shabby, Private,” he says, reaching up to straighten the knot in his tie. “In fact,” he continues, putting on a poor excuse for a Cockney accent that they haven’t heard hide nor hair of around these parts, “you might even spiff up pretty enough to sit with the ladies for a spot of high tea.”

Rust sets his rucksack down between his boots as the truck engine cranks over and they lurch forward, starting down the muddy road into town. “Think I might pass,” he says, tipping his face a little toward the warmth of the sun. “You and the other boys can go on, there’s a few places I wanna see in town.”

The letter is eating a hole straight through him and he doesn't even know what the hell it says, doesn't know if Martin is telling him his life story or telling him to fuck off. Rust drafts lines in his head for either outcome as the truck hurdles over a pothole in the road, and when he pulls his cigarette case from his jacket and puts a light between his lips Morales is there to hold out the flame on his zippo.

“What’s there to see in town?” he asks, jamming his own cigarette in the corner of his mouth before lighting up. “Other than tired old men and all the single women in England.”

“Architecture,” Rust says on exhale, flicking ash behind them into the wind. “Churches, art, historical sites, the local people and their wares—”

“Jesus Christ, forget I even asked,” Morales says, waving him off. “Guess I’ll cut you off the tether for a spell, but do me a solid and pick a meetup point. I can’t be off on some boy scout mission trying to reel your ass back in from wherever you wind up when it comes time to ship off tonight, especially not as staggering drunk as I aim to be by then.”

Rust sucks another pull off his cigarette and watches the countryside smear by in watercolor streaks of low stone walls and green fields, rolling pastures under blue sky dotted with cows and flocks of wooly sheep. “That’s fine,” he says, mind wandering off to some faraway farm he's never been to and only heard about, one man holding it down on his own. “Find a spot when we get there.”

 

 

Half the guys stumble out of the trucks like they don't know what the real world looks like anymore, meandering into Norwich like they’ve stepped into a forgotten utopia. Rust crosses over the bridge into town and thinks for all the wartime greyness this place still looks like something from a painting or a postcard, something Monet might have painted one small brushstroke at a time, the whole of it alive and bright with a thousand merging colors. He doesn’t know where to start, either, but others have plans they mean to stick to and Ginger turns out to be one of them.

“We ain’t on the bayou anymore, boys,” he says, sucking in a lungful of the English air before spitting on the cobblestones. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t drink like we’re down home in swamp country.”

He's already drawn in two of the other guys and they stick to him like ticks on a mongrel cur, backing almost every move he makes, guided by a fool’s hand or not. They start down the main road with all the boister and swagger of a herd of high school jocks, peering through dim windows and rattling chains when they tug on locked doors.

Morales watches them go, laughing under his breath. "Guess those pricks don't know that most of the bars around here aren't open at ten in the morning." He turns towards Rust, catches him readjusting his rucksack on his shoulder and peering up at the sprawl of hand-lettered shopfront signs. “What were some of those stops you wanted to make while we’re here in town?”

"You sticking with me?" Rust asks, raising his eyebrows.

Morales pulls another cigarette from his case and lights up, mumbling around it from the corner of his mouth. "Might for a bit,” he says, glancing at his wristwatch. “At least until lunchtime rolls around and I can get my hands on a decent beer that isn’t that horse piss they’ve bottled at camp.”

He leans in to nudge Rust with his shoulder as they walk, flicking the filter on his cigarette with a thumb. “And you’d be surprised to find that I might just happen to enjoy your company, against my better judgement and all."

"Guess seein' civilization's gone and made you sentimental," Rust says, smirking when Morales smacks him on the arm.

"Get going before I change my mind," Morales says, squinting ahead into the heart of Norwich.

The summer air here is a lot different than it is in Texas, thinner and clearer like a slice of earth raised a bit higher than the rest, above the clouds and the bluster of the states. But under the novelty of a foreign land there's a feeling threaded through the town like it could crumble at any minute, the memory of the Blitz still at the forefront of everyone's thoughts.   
  
The women smile at them as they pass by pushing baby prams and carrying shopping baskets while the men nod stiffly or look away, something dark clouded across their deep-lined features. All the American soldiers have heard what the English men who remained behind think of them, moving in on their country and their women, and Rust can't help but bow away from their gaze rather than meet it. But Morales purrs greetings to all the ladies whether they’re rosy-cheeked or grey-haired and they keep smiling, don't seem phased by anything anyone else thinks when faced with a tall drink of dark and roguish handsome.

"Too many beautiful girls here, man," Morales groans, letting his fingers skim over the pale brick wall of a drug store. “Sure glad I cut all my ties back home before we shipped out. Makes smelling the roses across the pond a whole lot sweeter.”

"Sounds like you've forgotten there's a war on," Rust says, shading his eyes against the sun.

"Just finding the greener grass, brother,” Morales says as they stroll past the boat marina into another throng of brick buildings and shops. “Who knows, you might find a little something to nibble on in the meantime.”

Rust looks straight ahead as they walk, passing a low cart full of heat-stricken bouquets and a man peddling what looks like oranges for five or six times the normal price. “I doubt that,” he says, the sound of it something that rings firm despite feeling hollow, and this time Morales doesn’t have a comeback to throw him for an answer.

They slow to a stop when Rust sees a little trolley cart full of books angled out in front of a shop door, dark wood lettered with chipping gold. The name on the lacquer says _Harrington’s Books and Stationery_ , something Rust glances at before turning to peer in the dusty window.

"Come on," Morales says, a wheedling tone edging through his voice. "Know you wanna go inside."

The door squeaks a bit when they open it and Rust almost feels like he's going to yank it off its hinges if he pulls too hard, listening to the tiny brass bell announce their entry like a songbird above his head. Inside the air is dry as a tomb and smells like the interior of a sun-warmed steamer trunk, the walls lined top to bottom with mismatched bookcases like swaybacked giants, filled to the brim and each labeled with a piece of tape scrawled on in careful calligraphy marker. There are little tables set up in the middle of the room, arranged by price and piled high with books of all clothbound colors and sizes. Near the front there's a checkout desk against the right wall, a little old couple sitting behind it and playing a game of checkers while a fat orange cat lazes across the paper-covered counter in a yellow pool of lamplight.

Rust takes it all in, his eyes eventually landing on the spiral staircase in the back corner leading up to a loft. There are more bookcases up there and two large red couches, worn with the creases of all the years they've been housed here.

Morales has pulled his cap off his head and is already taking a book off the one pound table, flipping through the yellowed pages. "Winnie the Pooh," he says, grinning at Rust over his shoulder.

"You boys just let us know if you need any help," the old woman says, still not looking up from her game.

Rust heads in further, trailing his fingers along the edges of tables, pulling up dust in places and smoothing over upraised words in others. The ancient feeling of all these stories growing old seeps into his skin, the musty smell of all the different volumes and novels and old magazines mingling in the air. There's a whole section of poetry near the back of the shop and he gravitates toward it, leaving Morales to chuckle through another children's book with _Winnie the Pooh_ still tucked under his arm.

Most of these books are used, worn down in the hands of people he'll never know save for the occasional note penciled in the margins. The torn edges might tell him something about them, or a water stain weighing down a word that could very well be someone's tear from decades ago. He sees the occasional new book, crisp and sharp with blots of new ink, but he's more attracted to the ones that tell deeper stories in dust-bound covers than the ones threaded with virgin pages.

The names of poets that might be long-dead or still living greet him from the shelves wedged in the back, and Rust trails a fingertip down the spine of books full of Yeats and William Blake, Wilde and Austen, John Keats and even an ancient-looking tome bound in midnight blue and gold stars that houses the translated poetry of Rumi. For a moment he feels like he's back in school, piling his contraband from the library into his bag, already planning on returning them late. He never really thought of finding a place like this when they shipped off for England—didn't think of the towns or the people untouched by the front lines. He only thought of war, of shuddering in his uniform as he prepared for the inevitable end. He hasn't thought of beauty or warmth since the world came crashing down around him, a twisted red tricycle and the slick shine of too much blood.

Rust is torn away from the grasp of jagged memory when he notices the deep amber volume that stands out among the rest, a honey-flavored color that chases the bitter copper from his mouth. He pulls it free from the shelf before he even reads the name on the spine, hefting the weight of the printed words in one hand. If there was ever a dust jacket on the book it’s long lost and gone, and he’s surprised to find the plain-embossed name on the cloth cover so familiar, yet he doesn’t know if he’s ever read a lick of poetry that fell from the man’s pen. T.S. Eliot.

Rust flips to a page near the middle and is met with a poem titled _Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_. The words sing out, the rhythm rolling off his tongue as he mouths the lines, and he's already entranced with it before he even reaches the end.

 

 _And would it have been worth it, after all,_   
_After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,_   
_Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,_   
_Would it have been worth while,_

 _To have bitten off the matter with a smile,_   
_To have squeezed the universe into a ball_   
_To roll it toward some overwhelming question,_   
_To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,_   
_Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—_

 _If one, settling a pillow by her head,_   
_Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;_   
_That is not it, at all.”_

 

Flowers bloom in his mind's eye and he can almost taste spoonfuls of honey, the aroma of something sweet dancing in the air. Tucked away in a warm house while rain slides down the window, another set of hands reaching for his own. That name Lazarus pulling an unwound thread through his mind on a spool of red.

"Hey," Morales' voice calls from the front, and Rust looks up, startled at how loud he sounds in here. "They got some real nice stationery."

Rust closes the book and turns it over in his hand, sees that it's priced at two pounds. He holds it close at his side, already knows he isn't going to leave the shop without it. He slowly starts weaving through the low tables, back to where daylight is reaching in through the front windows.

Morales is leaning against the counter with his hip cocked out, scratching under the orange cat’s chin when Rust walks up on the draped table covered with ribbon-wrapped stacks of envelopes and fine boxes of untouched letter paper.

“Can’t keep tearing pages out of your journal,” Morales says while the cat purrs and butts into his hand, spinning on the spot so his fingers trail down its side. He shrugs and spares Rust a casual glance before looking back at the fountain pens arranged on the counter. “Might as well.”

The old man has disappeared behind a maroon curtain at the rear of the shop but the woman sits up higher on her stool, sipping at a steaming mug of tea that had somehow appeared between their arrival and the end of the checkers game. She watches Morales over the rims of her glasses and purses her lips a bit, smiling as she holds her cup in front of her mouth.

“That damn cat hasn’t let a Yank touch her since you lot got here,” she says, sniffing a little. “Usually runs and hides up in the loft, can’t be bothered with all these rowdy warmen, you know.”

“Is that so?” Morales says, flashing her his signature grin full of big white teeth. “Suppose I’ve always had a way with the ladies, pretty redheads most of all.”

Rust shakes his head as he keeps perusing the stationery, worrying his lip as his eyes scan over all the parchment and embossed paper. A variety of eggshell whites and some in pale pinks, dove-colored grey with gold ivy curling around the borders that looks like it costs more than everything in his pockets put together. There are wax seals and boxes full of crimson red shipped from France, and it all looks like too much of anything to bear Rust’s humble words until his eyes land on a little cardboard-boxed set full of soft blue, like robin eggshell diluted with a drop of milk.

He picks it up without thinking and takes that and the Eliot book to the counter where Morales steps aside to give him room. The ginger cat makes a tiny noise when the warm hands fall away and skims along Rust’s arm so the deep purrs vibrate against him, not turning away until he reaches up to run two fingers down the line of her spine. He picks up one of the black fountain pens from where they're on display and adds that to his stack, pushing everything forward and fumbling for the foreign money in his pocket.

"That'll be five pounds, love," the woman says, her smile lines going deep as she spares one for him. Rust pays and she wraps up his purchase, handing him a paper bag with the shop's name printed on the outside. Morales squeezes his shoulder and steers him toward the door, back out into the open air.

"Little shocked you haven't read that letter yet," Morales says as they continue down the street, glancing down at Rust's bag. "Wasn't even sure another one would be coming, and here we are. God knows what the hell it says."

Rust's eyes graze a flower shop as they pass by it, the bursts of purple and yellow bright against the greying skies. "I'll find out in a bit," he says, all too focused on it himself.

They hear the fountain before they see it, turn the corner and are presented with what must be the town square. A lot of the other guys have already found it and lay perched on the steps of the fountain like a family of sunning sea lions, the stone cherubs and angels sending streams of water between them. Bobby Lutz blows a tune into his harmonica with one elbow propped on a knee as he belts out a song of his own making, one they've all grown sick of since they've been around since its inception. Gallagher lays with one hand skimming the surface of the water, holding up one of the six letters he got today in front of his face, blocking out the sun as it drifts in and out between passing clouds.

There's a little clothing shop called _Lady Audrey's_ behind the curve of the square and a group of young girls clip-clap out in their Mary Jane heels, a bunch of shopping bags lining their arms up to the elbow. Harrison Gill is busy cracking into his usual bag of peanut shells and Christensen has bought a bouquet of snow-white daisies that must’ve cost a small fortune, passing them out to any lady who ventures close enough to bask in his silver-tongued flatteries.   
  
One girl is taller than her friends, with black curls and a collared blouse printed with tiny silk flowers. Christensen pretends to pull a daisy from behind her ear with a sleight-of-hand maneuver and she rolls her eyes, whisking away so her skirt whips around her legs. She turns to leave and bumps headlong into Morales, who reaches up to steady her with one hand at her waist while her shopping bags crash around their feet.

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she stammers, crouching down next to Morales to start picking up the dropped bags, their fingers brushing above the street. “I didn’t even look at where I was walking—”

Morales smiles and helps the young woman to her feet, keeping most of the bags hooked over his own arm. “That’s fine, miss, it’s not very often I run into a lady as lovely as yourself. Consider it my pleasure.”

She blushes bright pink and Morales winks over her shoulder at Rust before extending his elbow for her to loop an arm through. “If you aren’t too busy, I'd be honored if you could accompany me to lunch."

Rust smiles slightly and shakes his head, watching as the girl acquiesces, waving at her group of friends as they part ways. The two of them start down the road, Morales looking back towards Rust. He points towards the fountain, mouthing _I'll meet you back here ._

Rust nods at him, doesn't pay any mind to the other guys trying to woo the remaining girls as he turns down another road, leaving the bunch of them behind. As much as he enjoys Morales’ company he feels a bit lighter now that he's alone, slowing his step as he searches for the perfect place to sit down. His stomach aches, the stray bit of oatmeal from this morning not holding him over by a longshot, and he knows if he goes much longer without reading Marty's letter that it'll burn its way right through his bag.

Once he's passed by a wave of apartments and another row of shops he finds a small cafe. It has a fenced-in patio and most of the small round tables are nestled underneath the canopy of an overwhelming cherry tree that has littered pink petals over the sidewalk.

There’s only one elderly man sitting out front with a black umbrella and a cup of steaming tea, reading the newspaper under shade of the blooming tree. Rust nods at him without letting his eyes linger as he pulls the door open, stepping into a warm gust of black coffee and fresh-baked bread, sweet apples and cinnamon sugar. A woman with her fair hair tied up in a white cloth looks up from the dough she’d been rolling out when he walks in. She wipes her hands off on the apron knotted around her waist, offering a small smile.

“Can I help you?” she asks, watching Rust’s eyes drop to the sparsely-filled bakery case built into the front counter. “The sweets are a bit harder to come by, what with this dreadful rationing going on, but we’ve got some biscuits made fresh this morning if you’re looking to sit in for tea.”

Rust’s eyes scan over the menu board without really reading the words, fingering the nylon strap on his rucksack. The rest of the cafe is empty save for some muffled clamoring coming from the kitchen in the back and he keeps his voice held low, watching her thumb a smudge off the glass case.

“Just something small for lunch if you don’t mind, whatever’s easiest to make,” he says, clearing his throat. “And some tea or coffee, black. So long as it’s hot.”

The woman smiles and arches an eyebrow. “Not a picky one, are we? There’s nothing in particular you’d like?”

“No ma’am,” Rust says, trying on a small smile to offer back to her. “I’m sure anything you serve here would be a big improvement from what I’ve been eating in the mess back at camp.”

Her eyes roam over his face and she nods, reaching for a pan of bread. "I'll fix you up. Go on and find a table, I'll bring your food when it's ready."

"Much obliged, ma'am," Rust says, turning around to head back outside. There's one table closest to the tree and he pulls out a seat, settling down and putting his bag from the bookstore in the empty chair next to him. He immediately drags his rucksack up into his lap, unhitching the latch and fishing out the letter.

He finds it and shoves his thumb under the seal, ripping it ragged but he's unconcerned with the state of the envelope so long as the letter comes out unscathed. He unfolds the paper and finds himself faced with the response, his heart high in his throat and his breath coming a hair faster than normal.

 

You sure do talk a lot about wasted time on yourself, and it seems like more than one man might be inclined to disagree with that. Don’t know me from Adam, of course, but your pal Morales sounds like he’s got a good enough head on his shoulders. Tell him I send regards from the home front, if you happen to get a chance.  
  
I’m not apt to be sending any cheesecake pictures for the war effort but here’s to hoping I can at least dole out some decent conversation. Little bit more about myself, I was born and raised on the farm I’m still tending in Louisiana, been working it alone since my old man went into a home about eight years back. Traveled some around the south and a few bordering states but that was years ago now when I was a boy, haven’t gotten around much in the meantime. Never did meet or talk to a man who came up in Alaska, so if you’d ever be willing to shed some more light on that I’m all ears. Hear they got moose five hands taller than a damn workhorse up there, always figured that for some kind of fish tale. But here you might be the man to know.  
  
Age-wise I’m 27, turning 28 come the end of August. Surprised to hear you’re so young yourself, would’ve pegged you for a few years older somehow. But as for the foal, yeah, I’m expecting Lily to drop a colt or filly sometime soon. Could be any day now, come to think of it, but they never do give you much warning. Got the gelding out there with her in the field, so if she foals in the night old Rosco will help keep an eye.  
  
Other than the horses it’s just the two dairy cows, the chickens, a couple old goats and Blue. Best farmhand a man could ask for, that dog. He’s still on the young side yet but he’s helping me keep on top of things, and we’re coming up on the sugar cane harvest here pretty soon. Can be hard work, but I always tend to bring in a good yield for myself.  
  
Not sure you can talk much about what’s going on over there, but I hope England’s treating you right. Always imagined it like one of them Charles Dickens books. The way they write, seems like the place is only ever covered in snow.  
  
Well, the sun’s going down here and I’ve got to clean up dinner yet, but it was sure good to see your letter in the box. No rush on an answer, but I’ll be here when it happens to come along.

 

Rust finds the corners of his mouth twitching up, the paper trembling slightly between his fingers. He's relieved, so much so that he sags back in his seat with his forearms resting on the table. But the wash of relief is something he surprises himself with and he wants to press a finger into it, pick at the corner like the loose edge of peeling wallpaper until it curls up enough to see what’s underneath. But all that only currents secondhand under the little bud of warmth unfurling somewhere up in the softness behind his rib cage.

He doesn't understand why this guy cares, why he didn't pitch him away after the first response or the second either, but he finds a strange sense of comfort in knowing that someone other than Morales can spare a thought for him and not consider it wasted. Martin—Marty—is persistent, Rust knew that already, and he feels like the kind of guy who wouldn't fight for something that he didn't think was worth it. That makes Rust linger, wondering what he sees in him that he doesn't see himself. He's still here, still writing, with no clear intention to stop.

The portrait of Marty Hart he's building in his mind has gained a splash of color, another abstract brushstroke shedding light on what makes him who he is. Rust has never seen him before but he can almost hear him speak, almost catch the timbre of his voice on the tail ends of certain sentences. Rust likes the way that voice makes him feel, a certain connection he didn't think he could make, a sense of worth that he hasn't had a grasp on in a good number of years. Questions build, threaten to tumble out of his mouth into open air, and he's got to ask. Feels it even heavier than last time, something so necessary that his fingers shudder just thinking about it.

The waitress breaks into his thoughts by sliding a plate onto the table in front of him, followed by a cup and saucer full of steaming black tea by the smell of it. "Hope you like it," she says, smiling down at him before returning inside.

Rust’s stomach has been making steady work of gnawing through his backbone and he’d been ignoring it as he read and reread, no stranger to the hollow rumble of hunger, but now he sets Marty’s letter aside, trapping it under his saucer before picking up one of the little triangle-cut sandwiches on his plate. A bite reveals the cool taste of fresh cucumber, fresh cream cheese and the citrusy bite of lemon pepper. He eats the whole first half before he notices the pair of cookies tucked on one side of the plate, left there in an unspoken offering likely meant to go along with his noontime tea.

He thinks about Marty Hart and his dirty dishes, caught in the wheel of time since he finished this letter. Rust wonders about Lily and the foal, if she's had it yet. Wonders about Blue and what he looks like stretched out on a porch in the Louisiana sun. Wonders about Marty most of all, everything about him. How he takes his coffee, what he likes best about his farm. How he's faring during wartime life back home.

Things pick at his mind that he can't ask, like why his father is in a home and the nagging question since moment one, what went and twisted up his leg. Rust suddenly resents the time it takes to send a pair of letters back and forth. He keeps eating and reaches into the bookstore bag, pulling out the pen and new stationery, awkwardly unspooling the ribbon with one hand.

Rust writes freely with black ink over the blue paper, only pausing to brush away a stray cherry blossom when it falls across the page.  


   
  
I think you've got Tony all wrong—can't hardly focus unless he's got a skin mag in his hand and is the only S.O.B in the company willing to waste his time trying to socialize me. Ongoing project for him, I guess. But I'll pass on your kind words, sure he'll appreciate them.

You ever get around to Texas when you were younger? I went back after I left Alaska, climate was a lot easier on me. As for the last frontier, a bit of exaggeration on the moose, but not by much. Felt like a whole different world up there sometimes, like the earth might crack under my feet and swallow me whole. But the night sky was something else, a whole ocean of stars that I haven't seen the likes of anywhere else. This place might compare sometimes, late at night when all the lights are out. I've got some good memories of Alaska, but mostly it reminds me of my father.   
  
What day is your birthday in August? You got anything planned? Funny you thought I was older, I was thinking you were around my same age. Guess that foal's gonna keep you busy either way. Has she had it yet, since your last letter? Don't know if you named your animals yourself, but I can tell some real thought went into them. What kind of dog is Blue? I had one when I was growing up, sleek black pit bull that came and went as he pleased until he stopped showing up altogether. Here's hoping yours is a little more loyal than that.   
  
So your crops still selling? We've heard things from families back home, seems every day's a struggle and the whole country's falling flat no matter where you’re looking. Hope you can stay on your feet through it all.   
  
No snow yet, will probably get some in the coming months, though I saw enough of it in Alaska to last me a lifetime. We ain't been doing much, just a lot of PT. We all know the other shoe is gonna drop eventually, in the meantime the Lieutenant likes to holler at us until we're something resembling a company of soldiers. I'm on a day pass at the moment, found a nice cafe with good tea, a lot better than the sludge they call coffee at our mess hall. A little glimpse of real life. Thought this might be a good place to write back, I only got your letter about two hours ago.   
  
Just wanted you to know up front, when the day does come that I see actual combat, anything could happen. Could make a wrong turn and be blown to pieces, could step over the line and be taken for prisoner. I've heard a lot of stories about men moving into warzones and never coming back and well, it ain't guaranteed I'll be making it through this thing—that anybody will. No gentle way of saying it, but it’s something to keep in mind.   
  
Don't seem like we're gonna leave this country any time soon, so in between training and Morales talking my ear off, I'll be looking forward to your next letter.   


 

“Well isn’t this a quaint scene?” Morales’s voice drifts from over one shoulder, and Rust doesn’t jump but only carefully closes his notebook over the letter, tucking the blue paper inside the pages.

“Surprised you aren’t staggering drunk yet,” Rust says, picking up his tea for a sip. The woman inside had come out with a pot to top him off a few minutes before, leaving a few cubes of sugar in a little dish if he needed them.

“Picturesque,” Morales says, ignoring Rust to flop down in one of the empty chairs next to him. “They should have one of the war photographers follow you around, capture the life and times of Rustin Cohle. You’re the spitting image of what every mother back home thinks her son is doing on leave in England—sippin’ high tea with a classic in hand instead of sharing cheap smokes with a painted hussy."

"How'd your little date go? Didn't seem to last long," Rust says, savoring a bite of one of his cookies.

Morales kicks his boots up and pulls his cap down over his eyes, shrugging a little while he folds his hands in his lap. “Differences of opinion between fair Lydia and I,” he says, not bothering to brush away the pink blossom that falls onto his shoulder. “Turns out some of these English roses have thorns, but I’m not giving up just yet.”

He pushes his cap back up on his head after a moment and angles his chin toward Rust’s notebook and the open box of stationery still sitting on the table. “Speaking of flowers,” he says, cutting a grin like a fox. “How’s your Louisiana magnolia?”

“Mhmm,” Rust hums, cutting his eyes low as he starts putting the paper away with stiff-armed movements. “Be a shame if Salter caught wind of some contraband hidden under a certain mattress back at barracks. Maybe tucked behind the lid of his footlocker where most don’t think to look. I’ll have to slide that past him when we get back, some kind of anonymous tip.”

Morales’s eyes narrow but he laughs, reaching out to snag a piece of cookie off Rust’s plate. “I was just pulling your leg a little, Tex,” he says, munching on the shortbread. “And we both know that’s all hot air you’re blowing my way. I bet Martin would be flattered.”

"He had some things to say about you," Rust says, piling up his mess and finishing his tea. "Guess you ain't interested in any of that." He wipes off his mouth and gathers his things, rising to his feet and pointedly not looking at Morales.

"What's he got to say about me?" Morales asks, following hot on Rust's heels as he goes inside to pay. "What would he have—you been telling him shit? Lying to this guy?"

"Ain't lying," Rust says, sauntering up to the front counter and smiling at the woman as she rings him up. "Telling God's honest truth." He notices the woman doesn't charge him for the cookies, and he smiles warmly at her, the kindness not lost on him.

Morales sighs, throwing his arms up only to let them flop back down against his sides again. "You know I hate this, Cohle. Know it probably isn't anything 'cept some one liner but now I gotta know."

Rust tips the woman and mouths _thank you_ , turning to shake his head at his friend. "A shame."

“You can play coy all you want,” Morales says, letting Rust lead the way back out into the street, falling in step beside him as they meander in the direction of the fountain. “But I’ll shake it out of you yet.”

The clear sky from that morning has begun to darken and grow restless, all the flags flying above Norwich flapping like handkerchiefs in the wind. A crack of thunder moans low in the distance and Rust pulls his cigarette case out, lighting up another smoke before snapping his zippo shut. They pass a woman holding the tiny hand of a little girl in a red raincoat and his eyes stray to it like blood on freshly-fallen snow, the color bright as a painted target in the greyness slanting over the street.  
  
Morales sees her too and looks down at his boots for a moment before briefly bringing his eyes up to the side of Rust’s face, suddenly gone skittish as a yearling deer. “I know it hasn’t been that long, since,” he says, the rest of his sentence bitten off and held somewhere under his tongue, “but do you ever—”   
  
“No,” Rust says, blowing a stream of smoke up into the air. “I don’t.”  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're on tumblr, feel free to follow us at dear-rustin.tumblr.com for chapter updates and inspirational photos that coincide with the story. Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

  
The only lights burning aside from the waning moon are the row of bare bulbs bolted to a wooden beam in the barn, yellow and haloed by a handful of fluttering moths. It’s been dark for hours now and Marty navigates the beaten path from the yard to the pasture by more muscle memory than anything else, messily-laced boots following the narrow flare his flashlight throws out in front of him.

He's got a newly-delivered letter folded carefully in his back pocket, feeling the weight of it with every step. There's a deep warmth in his chest that doesn't have much to do with the beer he'd had with dinner and he finds himself smiling lightly as he continues on his way.

The animals make soft noises through the blue-black shadow, rustling in their pens or nickering to one another when they hear him coming. Little squeaks sound from above as dark shapes wing through the faint moonlight and Marty knows the bats are out for the night, snagging their dinners from the summer air.

Lily and Rosco are out in the field, standing close to one another with their heads hanging lower in something akin to sleep. They look up when they see him coming but don’t move yet, and it takes a few handfuls of sweet feed thrown in the bottom of a bucket and a couple low whistles on his part before Lily turns and starts the slow trek up to the barn, snowy tail swishing in Rosco’s face as he ambles along behind her. The white mare is still round and pregnant as anything, heavy belly swaying from side to side with every step.

Marty works a halter over her head once she’s got a mouthful of sweet feed and tethers her to a post in the barn, talking low while he rubs down her sides and checks her legs.

“Making me look bad, Lilybird,” he says, combing his fingers through her mane to pick a stray field spur out. “Here I’ve been telling our soldier pal for two weeks running you got a foal to drop but I don’t see any baby on the ground. Better be something good in there, long as you’ve been cooking it up.”

Lily lets out a long sigh as Marty steps back, gently pushing Rosco’s head away so he can shuffle around to get a brush off its nail hanging on the wall. He makes quick work of combing through the mare’s tail with sure strokes and then divides the white hair into three sections, carefully braiding it from the top and working down.

He should’ve done this days ago but the thought only hit him twenty minutes before while he was sitting in the kitchen, halfway thinking about finally calling it a night and dragging his ass upstairs to bed. It’d either been that or get started on replying to Rust. It was late but he’d wanted to get his thoughts down despite the tiredness hanging heavy in his bad knee and joints, like somehow the day wasn’t done until he’d thought about how he’d share it with someone else.

Lily keeps steady while Marty finishes up the braid and twists it into a wrapping, thinking of how his mother first taught him to do this nearly fifteen years before, using her nimble fingers to weave scraps of old dress fabric together before passing him a set to practice with himself. At the time he hadn’t known how it’d come in handy later in life, braiding up his prize mare’s tail a hair before midnight while the promise of a new baby hung in the air.

Marty'd been eighteen years old and on the verge of his high school graduation when he first set eyes on Lily, newly born at a farm two towns over and twice the size of theirs. They'd gone to pick up supplies, maybe a tractor to replace their old one, but he'd caught sight of her when they were heading to the big house and nearly tripped over his own feet. She was only a few weeks old and a deep pristine white, some kinda color he only thought existed in fairy tales. The filly closed her eyes when he ran his fingers through her mane and nudged closer, her mother keeping a close eye on the two of them. Marty knew right then that he couldn't leave without her, would put up his whole college savings if it meant he got to take her home when she was ready.

No deal was struck that day and still hadn't been a week after he'd graduated. He'd simmered and burned and did his chores with his jaw set, planning on striking off towards the farm to get her himself soon as he was able. He'd always remember his father nudging him towards the barn, saying _give it a quick onceover before supper_ _,_ and like something out of a dream the little mare was there waiting for him in the last stall with a little blue bow tied into her mane. Marty had smiled so hard he felt like his face might split in two.

He'd always loved his farm, but he never felt more a part of it than when he saw Lily grazing in the field.

The mare tips her head toward him as he straightens back up and slips the halter off her head, running a tender hand down her back and reaching up to scratch behind her ears. "Think you're gonna do real good with the new baby, when it comes," Marty says, gazing down at her. "Always thought you'd be a good mama."

He almost feels like waiting, standing vigil until something starts to happen, but a few moments pass full of cricket song and the trees swaying in the wind and he knows there's no point to standing around and keeping them awake. He pets her once and then again, heaving a sigh. "I'll be out here first thing in the morning," he says, rubbing Rosco's head before he starts back toward the house.

The chicken coop is peaceful when he checks it, and he's glad there aren't any signs of the intruder from before. "Night, ladies," he whispers, watching as a few of them puff themselves up before settling back down again, their beady eyes blinking slow before finally closing completely.

Blue sits stoic in the front window of the house, no doubt balancing on the couch with his front feet in the windowsill. Marty snorts, shaking his head as he glances up at the sky, the thick velvet dark draped over the world. He stands up close to the porch and palms around for the letter, drawing it out of his pocket to think about Rust for a moment. He’s been thinking about him a lot more lately, keeps finding himself talking to the animals about this man across the world who he’s never met. He doesn't know what the hell time it is over in England, knows he's gotta start keeping track of that kind of shit, but for some reason it eases his mind to think that when Rust does see night it probably looks just like this.

He never knew, back when Maggie pushed that address across the table, that three letters in he’d already be anxious for more.

The clock is surely knocking elbows with midnight now but Marty leaves the kitchen light burning and lowers himself down into a chair with a glass of milk in one hand, slowly spreading Rust’s letter out in front of him on the table. He rereads it a few more times and picks up the closest pen, rubbing sleep from his eyes while his words start to scratch across paper.

 

* * *

 

The way you talk about Alaska got me thinking some, and Louisiana ain’t any final frontier or faraway world but it can tend to feel the same way sometimes. Like maybe the earth under your feet is more alive than we ever give it credit for. Something about working a farm and living off the land’ll put that in your head, maybe, but I’m not sure now where I was going with the thought. Blame it on too many long days under the sun—shit fries your brain up like an egg.  
  
To answer some of your questions, my birthday is coming up on the 21st of August. Nothing highfalutin planned just yet but maybe I’ll surprise myself this year, and speaking of surprises I’m still waiting on the mare to foal, taking her dear sweet time like she is. Can’t hardly believe she’s still carrying but for as long as that baby’s been in the oven I reckon it’ll be a nice size, healthy and strong if we’re lucky. I’ve been going out to check on her at night now that it’s coming down to the wire. Soon as we got a new colt or filly running around I’ll send word along—outside Maggie, you’ll probably be one of the first to know.  
  
My boy Blue is a bluetick coonhound or something thereabouts, might have a drop of Louisiana leopard dog mixed in him but I ain’t one to get caught up on the purity of those things. A good dog is a good dog, far as I’m concerned. Crops are still selling but for a tighter penny in some aspects. Wish the hens could get a better deal for all their hard work with the laying, but wartime seems to have taken a toll on us all. It’ll pick back up, though. Soon enoug—

 

* * *  
  


Something clatters to the kitchen floor and Marty snorts awake with a start, blinking around for the source of the noise. The back of his left hand is wet where he’d been drooling on it and he wipes it across his pants leg before sitting up straighter, finding his pen a few feet across the linoleum next to Blue’s food bowl.

The darkness coming through the kitchen window looks a few shades lighter than he last remembers and Marty squints at the clock, finding the hour hand just past five in the morning. Blue snuffles and stretches in his bed over by the pantry to crack open two bloodshot eyes, tail gently thumping twice when he catches sight of Marty.

“Stay here, boy,” Marty says, slowly standing up from the table with a wince as his knee creaks underneath him. “I’m gonna make a run out to the barn real quick, feed early and then come on back to bed.”

Morning songbirds are already starting to wake up for the day, twittering to one another while the bats from the night before fly home to roost in bed. The ground is wet with dew and Marty doesn’t take his flashlight this time, more at ease under the slowly brightening daylight.

When he flips on the barn lights a pair of swallows drop down from the rafters and soar out into the open air, chasing one another above his head like two children playing a game of tag. It’s all still elsewhere save for the last dying remnants of cicadas humming their song while one of the cows lows quietly from the back paddock. The air drapes softly like an old sheet somehow, something wrapping warm and peaceful around Marty’s shoulders in an easy sort of embrace. It isn’t until he steps out into the pasture and scans across the field that he sees the reason for why.

Lily stands under her favorite shade tree, pretty head bowed low to lick and nuzzle the little bundle of legs still lying on the ground. It’s hard to tell in the dark and the only reason Marty sees the foal is because its markings shine white under the fading moon, two hind legs dipped with white stockings and a tiny face blazed white to match.

Rosco looks up first from where he’s standing curious guard nearby, making a soft sound when he sees Marty walk up. Lily doesn’t pay either of them much mind, only her ears twitching while she keeps cleaning afterbirth off the baby.

“Must’ve taken my words to heart, huh mama?” Marty whispers, feeling a smile pull around his mouth as he slowly walks up to the mare. The foal blinks at him but doesn’t struggle to stand yet, only throwing out one front leg for balance when Marty checks under a hind leg to find out it’s a colt.

“A little boy,” Marty says, rising back up to pat Lily’s side while he looks down at the baby. Up closer he sees just how small the foal seems, unexpected considering his father was full draft horse—one of Hank Clyatt’s biggest studs, a handsome Clydesdale so tall Marty’s head barely lined up with his shoulders. But despite his markings the colt doesn’t seem like he’s got a drop of draft blood in him, all thin legs and a delicate dish face like his mother.

“All that cooking time for this lil’ bit, Lily,” Marty snorts, hitching his hands up on his hips as he shakes his head. “If this were a litter of puppies you’d have just dropped the runt.” Lily swishes her tail and wickers to the baby again, taking a step around to start cleaning on the other side,  and Marty watches as a little white spot on his shoulder shows up. “He sure is pretty, though.”

Marty kneels down to get a better look. The colt blinks and squeezes his eyes shut when Lily licks at the top of his head. He draws up one skinny leg and braces his hoof on the ground, staying like that for a moment as he breathes deep.

"Gonna try to get up?" Marty asks, grinning outright.

The colt tries to get another leg up under him and nearly comes off the ground before easing back down again. His legs seem to have a mind of their own and he can't quite control them yet but it seems he's eager to try, pushing up off the ground again. In one quick motion all four of his legs bend and straighten back out, albeit shaking as he holds himself there with a bewildered sort of look on his face.

"You went and did it," Marty says, slapping his hand on his knee. "Think you might've even broken your mama's record, from what I heard."

The little thing is all concentration but he can't help it when his legs start to slide out from under him, all four of them extended straight out in some kind of big split. Marty watches him slowly ease back down to the grass and chuckles to himself, dipping his head down.

"You'll get it, lil bit," he says, getting back to his feet as Lily resumes her cleaning. He watches the baby try and fail again, his heart swelling at the sight. He's a dainty little thing and Marty just can't stop staring, feels a sense of wonder settle over him that he hasn't felt in a long while. The baby finally stands for more than a few seconds and even tries to take a step before falling back down again, and Marty can't quite believe he's allowed to bear witness to something so gentle and calming.

His mind strays to Rust again and he's hit with the feeling of wanting him here. A man he's never met and might not ever meet if his pessimism strikes any kind of chord in the cosmos, but Marty wants nothing more than to share this moment with him, to show him that there are still things to look forward to, things that light up the world even in the darkest of hours. He knows he can't show him but he's eager to tell, his heart leaping at the prospect of including this news in his letter.

He realizes then, with a flush growing in his cheeks, that he hasn't even thought about telling Maggie.  
  
The colt does take his first step then and Lily takes one to match, clearly planning on shadowing his every move. "That's a good girl," Marty says quietly, watching them walk together.

He can only pull himself away after a good fifteen minutes pass and he does his rounds in a haze of happiness, throwing feed to the cows and ruffling goats' ears before peeking in at the foal again. He knows he should head back to bed before his back aches for the rest of the day, but he wastes another half-hour leaning on the tree to watch the baby gain his footing and start nursing. Marty finds himself back in bed at about ten til seven, staring up at the ceiling and hardly able to wipe the smile from his face.

"Fuckin' wish he could see this," Marty mutters to himself, sinking down into his pillow as sleep finally begins to reclaim him.

   


 

"Mags, my talkin' about it won't do him the proper justice—you gotta come see for yourself. Can you make it out here today?"

Marty hears her laugh on the other end of the line while something crinkles faintly in the background. "I think I can make a trip once I close up down here,” she says. “Want me to bring anything?"

“Not if you gotta go out of your way, you know we ain’t anything fancy over here,” he says with a dismissive little snort. He ponders for a moment and pulls the phone cord away from the wall, bouncing it under his finger while his eyes rove over the ceiling. “Maybe some of those cookies of yours, if you’ve got them made already. The ones with the little crisscrosses in them.”

“You mean the peanut butter ones?” Maggie asks, voice gone a touch softer. “Sure I’ll bring some along—I’d just made a batch for Ted yesterday morning and still have some leftover.”

Marty tries not to swallow the word _leftover_ _,_ doesn’t want to let it sink down into his stomach and take root there. “That’d be nice,” he says, trying to force his smile through the phone receiver. “I’d like that.”

“I know how much you love them,” Maggie says, and the smile in her voice sounds genuine. A low voice that reminds him of the old doctor murmurs in the background and she comes back a second later talking faster. “Listen Marty, we’ve got somebody here with a broken leg that I’m gonna have to set and plaster but I’ll be out there as soon as I can—I can’t wait to see him.”

Marty tries to tell her goodbye but he isn’t fast enough, saying the words to an empty dial tone humming on the other end. But he still smiles when he hangs the phone back on the hook, rubbing his hands together as he goes to start fixing some cold sandwiches in the kitchen.

Part of Marty wishes his parents were here. He always imagined them watching him bring Lily up into her prime and he's struck for a moment, thinking how the farm is slowly becoming his own. There are still stray signs of his parents' reign but it's in the garden and the animals where all of Marty's touches are clear. Blue wasn't a thought in the air when Marty's parents were still plowing the fields, and there's a whole new generation of chickens here that wasn't before. Marty wonders what the horses remember of the time past, if the world looks different now that he's in charge. He spreads mayo on the bread laid out on the counter and searches for the sadness that usually laces these kinds of thoughts, but he can only find a sort of reverence there instead.

Once the old radio is turned to a station with a sweet and lilting tune Marty finishes up the sandwiches and washes a bowl of lemons he’d been meaning to use for lemonade. He rolls up his sleeves and whistles while he works, letting the mid-morning sun slant bright and welcome into the kitchen.

   


 

Blue bounds out through the screen door at a full gallop, thundering down the steps and straight over to Maggie’s car before she can even get both feet on the ground. He kicks up a flurry of dust when he skids to a stop and Maggie lets out a little yelp, holding a foil-covered plate and a bottle of something above her head.

“Let me set this down and then I’ll pet you,” she says, scolding him like a little boy as she knocks the door shut with one hip. “Get back, Blue, for Pete’s sake.”

“Surprised he even remembers you, been so long since you were out here,” Marty says, holding the screen door open as Maggie edges past him to go inside. She has on blue jeans that are cuffed at the ankle and a little candy-striped shirt that shows off a pale sliver of her stomach when she reaches up to fix her hair, pinned up in curls on either side of her head. She sets the bottle and the plate on the counter next to Marty's sandwiches, already piled together beside the sink.

Maggie throws Marty a look and bends over to take Blue’s face between her hands, gently ruffling his velvet ears. “It hasn’t been _that_ long,” she says, directing the words toward the dog while she smooths a palm over his head and straightens. “But I’m here now—so where’s this new baby of yours?”

“Just waiting on you to get here,” Marty says with a wide grin. He loads their food and a few empty cups into his mother’s old picnic basket, turning to lead the way back out onto the porch. The door creaks shut behind them and Maggie falls into step at Marty’s left, slowing her pace some to match his slightly limping stride while he talks. “He’s little but he’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever laid any claim to, I can tell you that much.”

Blue trots along behind them, eyes wary as he tries to peer through their legs. The swallows are busy fluttering around in the barn rafters again and Marty tips his head back to watch them, one of the two clutching a bit of grass in its beak. “Must’ve gotten a late start,” he murmurs when Maggie sees them too, jumping into the air and disappearing into the loft. “Year’s a little long in the tooth to be starting a family.”

“Better late than never,” Maggie says quietly, and when Marty turns to glance at her she’s looking straight ahead, already peering into the stall at the far end of the barn with a slight smile playing on her lips.

Lily turns and looks when they step through the low door, idly munching on a mouthful of alfalfa. She’s standing guard over the baby, now stretched out and sleeping in the soft bed of hay, sprawled on his side with his little whiskers twitching in the summer heat. He doesn’t move when Marty steps closer and Lily only shivers a fly off her flank, turning back to pull more food off her hay rack.

Maggie's hand comes up to cover her mouth as she follows in Marty's wake, drawn forward in some slow sort of trance. "Oh, Marty," she whispers, laughing a little breathless as she gazes down at the foal. "Oh, he's just beautiful."

"What'd I say?" Marty whispers, his features going soft as he sits the basket down and kneels next to him. He extends his hand and touches him light, a brush of his thumb across the white on his forehead. The foal only huffs slightly in his sleep, shifting closer to Marty. "Come on," Marty says, Lily's shadow cast over the both of them as she looms overhead, "you can pet him."

"Looks like something out of a children's story," Maggie says, easing down next to Marty until she's cross-legged in the hay. She smoothes her hand down the colt’s side once and then again, smiling so hard that Marty can't help but mimic it. "He's so soft. Just the most perfect little thing."

Marty looks up at Lily and feels a swell of pride, reaching up to rub around her nose. "Knew my girl was gonna do good," he says, grinning at her.

"You need to do a whole photo shoot with this one," Maggie says, grazing her fingers over his dark ears, watching them twitch in response. "I could bring my camera out next time. You think he's going to stay small like this?"

Marty clicks his tongue and eases back, his knee creaking as he straightens out his leg. "Wouldn't think so, considering how big his daddy was. Surprised me to see him come out this size, little bit of a thing."

Blue has been hanging back between them with his tail wagging slow and cautious, but he finally starts forward, nose leading the way and working overtime to catch the new baby's scent. Marty hooks a finger under his collar but the dog never takes eyes off the foal, one paw poised in the air above Maggie's knee.

"Never seen this one so reserved," Maggie says, scoffing as she watches him.

"Better get used to him, buddy," Marty says, absentmindedly massaging around his brace as he lets the dog go. "He's gonna be here for the long haul."

Blue sighs long-suffering and settles down between them with his tail still tapping on the barn floor. Maggie hasn't taken her hands off the baby since she sat down and she leans forward, placing a gentle kiss to the tip of his white nose. Her hair bounces against her ear as she turns to look at Marty, her eyes so bright and shining that he can't help but be proud of himself, as if he had any hand in all this.

"You give him a name yet?" she asks, draping one arm around Blue's middle.

Marty shakes his head. "Gotta think on it."

"Can't wait to see him up and around," Maggie says, smiling down on the foal again.

"Let's set up right outside," Marty says, grunting as he stands back up. "Maybe they'll come on out when we're eating."

 

   


Marty spreads out a blue-checked blanket and Maggie helps him straighten it, letting it flutter back down to sigh in the grass. He's itching for the cookies but knows he's got to keep his manners, feeding little scraps of turkey sandwich to Blue on the sly. Rosco comes to join them under the shade tree, lazily dozing with his black tail swishing away the odd fly.

Maggie toes her shoes off in the grass and sits with her bare feet stretched out in front of her on the blanket, sipping around a paper cup full of lemonade. She isn’t wearing lipstick today despite the pink blotting her cheeks and her lashes painted black, but Marty always thought she looked prettiest like this, with the sun on her face making the few little freckles there stand out more.

He surprises himself when he thinks, just for a moment, what Rustin Cohle might look like sitting across from him instead.

That thought curls away like smoke in the air when Maggie lets out a low whistle and calls Lily’s name. He turns and sees the white mare slowly ambling toward them from the barn, leading the little gangly-legged foal along behind her.

“There’s mama and lil’ bit,” Marty says, holding a piece of bread crust up in the flat of his hand when Rosco leans over to snuffle against his hair. “Let’s see if she lets the old aunties can get any closer this time around.”

As sure as the world the sister heifers perk up from where they’d been grazing across the pasture, one of them mooing in greeting as they start across the field at a quick walk. Their coats shine like golden wheat in the sun, ears perking forward in interest as they get closer to the picnic spread.

Lily watches the cows closely and stands between them and the foal but doesn’t make any move to chase them off this time, leaning over to pull up a mouthful of green grass while the baby peeks around her backside to blink at the newcomers.

He takes a tentative step around his mother and stretches his neck out, little tail wagging as the closest cow lowers her head and blows a gust of warm breath into his face. The foal jumps a little but doesn’t run, standing still while the other sister ambles forward to smell him and start licking across the top of his head.

“You best be careful, Lily,” Marty says, sneaking a cookie off the plate while Maggie is watching with her teeth biting into the smile on her mouth. “Miss Daisy and Petunia are gonna rob the cradle if you don’t watch out.”   
  
"Now you can't tell a mama something like that," Maggie says, turning to squint at him under her shaded eyes, thin gold watching glinting around her wrist.

Marty chuckles and Lily steps forward as if she understood him, licking the colt's head and snorting good-naturedly at the cows. Marty chews on the inside of his cheek as he watches Maggie hold out a crust like he did a moment before, something that the colt takes out of her hand dainty as can be before dropping it on the ground for his mother to pick up.

Marty scratches around his chin, a thin slice of anxiety setting up shop in the pit of his stomach. He hasn't gotten to talk to Maggie much about Rust since the whole thing started and looking at her now makes the words gain new life behind his teeth, ready to tumble out and reach her ears.

"Don't you wanna hear about that pen pal you passed along?" he says, tone hewn sharp enough to slice his own hand. “Rus _-_ _tin_ Cohle.”

Maggie directs her attention back over and brightens up, a different kind of smile gracing her lips. "Thought you said he was being difficult."

“He was,” Marty says. He tilts his head to the side and laughs lightly, munching on the last bite of his sandwich. “Got two more letters since then.”

Maggie's mouth drops open and she sits forward, her brows raising high on her forehead. "Two—two more letters?" She blinks, incredulous, shaking her head. "Marty. You didn't say anything?"

"Been awhile since I've seen you," Marty says, casting his eyes away from her and back to the foal, now nudging his pink nose back up under Lily to nurse.

"That's what the phone is for," Maggie says with a thinner sort of smile. "You can call me, I do get some down time."

"Mostly spent with Ted, I suspect," Marty says, grabbing another cookie outright for her to see this time. "Didn't wanna bother you."

"You can call me whenever you want, Marty," she says, fishing out the tone she used to scold Blue earlier. "So tell me now—he still being distant?"

Marty catches her eye while he eats the cookie in two bites, a spark of something sly glinting across his face when his brows quirk up. He relishes the last few moments of this being his little secret, even though he's aching to talk about it with another human being. “You know I have a gift for winning folks over, Mags,” he says. “My natural charms weren’t going to waste on any Rustin Cohle, either.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to court him,” Maggie snorts, winking and laughing when Marty throws her a startled look, all the rogue charisma from before wiped clean off his face. She stifles her laughter behind one hand, speaking again before he can fire back. “So what's he like? He say anything about what he's doing over there?"

"Guess he can't say much about what he's doing, only know he's in England for the moment," Marty says, leaning back to brace his hands on the blanket as he shoots her a look. "As for what he's like...well. You definitely handed me a complicated one, I'll give you that."   
  
He sighs, thinking of the letters folded up in his father's desk, the newest still smoothed out on the kitchen table next to his half-written reply. "Was born in Alaska, lived in Texas before he went off to fight. Seems like he's got some kinda weird relationship with his dad, didn't tell me much other than he hasn't seen him in a while. And he ain't got high hopes about his chances once he sees combat—seems dead set on reminding me he can eat a bullet at any second. Real somber kind of guy, by the looks of it.”

Maggie drains the last sip of lemonade out of her cup and reaches up to scratch around the little tuft of hair on Petunia’s forehead when she leans over to nose against her shoulder. “Huh,” she says. “You never put up with much pessimism, long as I’ve known you.”

Marty thinks she must not know him as well as she thought, then—or maybe he’s the one who doesn’t know himself. He tries to swallow the guilt riding along his own thoughts, all his dust-clouded visions of living and dying alone, of toiling in his family’s plot of dirt until it turns into a grave. He can almost identify with Rust on that account, that every moment may be his last and it might not matter in the long run if he makes it to the next year or not. He just doesn't go around telling people about it.

He wonders if Maggie’d call that pessimism, if she knew. But he doesn’t say a word about it.

“I’m not letting him beat his doom stick too damn hard,” Marty says, eyes cast down as he picks at a frayed edge of the picnic blanket. “Think I’ll get through to him eventually, though, if we keep up with the writing. Seems real thoughtful at least.”

Maggie nods and grimaces when Petunia presses a wet nose against the back of her neck. “Well if he’s so thoughtful, you should probably go ahead and ask what he thinks all our men are doing over there.” She pushes the heifer away with a gentle hand and blows a loose curl of hair off her forehead. “From what I’ve heard, everybody not in Italy or Africa is sitting around playing patty-cake while Hitler torches half of Europe.”

“There’s a strategy that goes along with this shit, Maggie,” Marty says, cutting his eyes up quick as a knife blade. “Rust is always talking about training—well he calls it PT, but that’s what they’re busy doing. They can’t just up and storm the trenches with a bunch of greenhorn kids fresh out of fuckin’ high school. If these are the troops that are gonna be moving through Germany, they're gonna be seeing the brunt of it. Gotta get a plan going before they make the next big move.”

Maggie purses her lips but blows out a sigh. “Duly noted, General Hart,” she says, eyes flickering over. “Funny how you talk like you’re over there with him.”

“I would if I could be and you know that,” Marty says, and it’d feel like a loss if he reached down to touch or look at the brace on his left leg so he sets his jaw instead. “Maybe you’d know half as much if you’d held onto that soldier’s address yourself.”  
  
A gust of summer wind rustles through the oak trees and they’re quiet for a moment, watching as the foal follows Lily across the pasture to stretch out in a patch of clover grass. Rosco ambles over to check on him and then walks further down closer to the little gulley, kneeling to start rolling around in a patch of dust.

Maggie’s voice sounds like an apology when it comes back, softer and held out almost tentative. “I guess you’re right, Marty,” she says, letting the breeze card through her hair. “And I didn’t mean to—well, you know.”

“Yeah,” Marty says, looking at her hands on the blanket rather than her face.

She draws in a breath, picking a piece of grass from a wrinkle in her blouse. "When I passed his address along, I thought it might be good for you, talking to him and—whatever." She looks up, a small smile growing on her face again. "Is it? You like talking to him?"

Marty thinks about the mood he's been in all day, near fluttering about on the high of the new baby, and then he remembers the first person he wanted to tell about the news. He thinks about watching out the window for the mail, the sense of accomplishment when he finishes a letter of his own. He can almost hear Rust's voice in his head when he reads his words and sometimes it pipes in other times, like when he's going about his business in the fields or when he's fixing dinner. Almost like he’s there with him.

He's shocked out of his reverie by Maggie smiling even harder and he chuckles to himself, raising his eyebrows. "Reckon I do. Feel like it's probably good for both of us. I wanna know more about him. I like—” he thinks about his next words, wonders for a moment what turn of phrase was about to tumble out of his mouth. "I look forward to his letters, yeah. So I guess it was a good idea on your part, passing him along to me."

A smile reaches the corners of Maggie’s eyes and he knows they’re okay, knows it’d take a lot more than a couple butting heads to shake her off. She’d always been a good woman—probably too good, the way she’s always put up with him.

“Well good,” Maggie says, her cool blue eyes wavering over Marty’s face. “I’m glad I did.”

The animals start to stray away one by one and Blue is panting in the heat, pink tongue lolling while his eyes laze shut in the shade. Maggie starts tucking things back into the picnic basket and Marty helps her up before bending to fold the blanket, wedging it up under one arm.

“Louisiana summer is gonna kill me yet,” he sighs, squinting across the pasture. Maggie toes back into her shoes and they start the slow walk back up to the house, Blue trailing along behind.

“If you’ve got a couple glasses and some ice, I know something that might cool us off,” Maggie says, watching their feet shuffle through the grass. “That bottle I brought along is some wine courtesy of Ted’s parents’ vineyard.”

"Now you're talkin’ my language," Marty says, grinning over at her.

 

 

The cork hits the ceiling and Maggie yelps, Marty's chuckling drowned out completely under Blue's barking. Maggie settles him back down by scratching around his ears and Marty pours the wine, setting the bottle back down on the counter. He tries not to focus too hard on the fact that the last time he saw these glasses his parents were here and they were counting down the new year with a familiar voice on the radio. It was apple cider instead of red wine, he could bend his knee without wincing and the world hadn't been engulfed in a war that rattled them all to their cores.

Maggie clears her throat and picks up her glass, holding it out towards Marty. "To the beautiful new baby wobbling around outside, to winning this war and to all our soldiers fighting the good fight."

 _Especially mine_ Marty thinks, a sharp jolt running through his chest at the thought. "Here here," he says as Maggie's glass clinks against his, and downs almost all of it in one gulp.

 

   


A few hours after Maggie heads back into town finds Marty standing outside again watching the colt walk, already steadier and more sure on his feet. Lily swivels her head around as she watches him go, nickering and swishing her tail.

"What're we gonna call you, lil bit?" Marty asks. "Patches? Nah, doesn't sound like you." He clicks his tongue and starts forward, running his hand through Lily's mane before rubbing the foal's head. "Gonna have to think hard on it. Can't let you go nameless for long." He kisses over at Rosco, chuckling when the horse blows a snort back at him, and climbs the porch stairs to join Blue back in the house.

He heats up a can of beans and slides back into the chair in front of his letter, thumbs tracing over the edges of Rust's response. Something tugs at the corner of his mouth and he braces his elbow on the table as he starts to write.

 

* * *

 

Meant to finish this letter last night and went and fell asleep on it, but I’m back with some good news! Went out to check on Lilybird early this morning and she’d already foaled in the night, dropped a little colt that’s as handsome as he can be, a bay with a white face and two white stockings on his hind legs—go up so high they near about look like a lady’s pantyhose. Little bit on the smaller side considering his daddy is a pure Clydesdale draft but I figure he’s got some good growing to do yet. Was up on his feet real quick, sticking close to his mama and old Rosco. Cows are real curious about him but Lily took some warming up before she’d let them come over for a visit.  
  
I’ll be thinking on a name for him, not sure if anything’s hit me right off, but if you’re good with naming things I’d be open to hearing a suggestion or two. Sure wish you could see him for yourself, man. Went out there at dawn and it was like walking into some kinda painting, you know? Fog was still on the ground and the sun was just starting to shine through the trees, birds were talking all quiet like they knew the baby was here. Lily was cleaning the colt off, trying to get him to stand and nurse. She’ll be a good mama, I think—already is. And I’m probably biased, of course, but I don’t know if I’ve seen something as fine in a good long while. Downright pretty. But enough of that, can’t believe I’m sitting here writing you out a goddamn love sonnet about a horse.  
  
Saw Maggie for a spell earlier in the day and we talked some, little bit about the war and all, you know. What y’all are up against over there. Guess you’d be awfully sick of hearing about it, being where you are, but I appreciate you being up front in your last letter. Of course all that ain’t anything good to think about and you shouldn’t keep those outcomes as the only possibilities in your mind—get to thinking too negative and you might prejudice yourself into something that you could’ve otherwise avoided. Something my mama used to preach at me, back when she was alive: the power of positive thinking. But then again I suppose even the best of us know that sometimes it’s easier to not do any real thinking at all.  
  
You take care of yourself over there in England, and tell Morales that when he’s back over stateside I’d like for the two of us to sit down and have a beer sometime. The both of you, of course, but that Tony seems like a man after my own heart.

* * *

  


“Put some fucking spring in your step, Cohle!” Morales pants as he jogs alongside Rust, the two of them hauling over makeshift hurdles dropped in their path like landmines. “Gotta snag some front-row seats, I need to be close enough to get personally acquainted with Miss Landis’s tits.”

“Bet they aren’t real,” Rust says, squinting against the sweat starting to slide down into his eyes. “Twenty spot says she stuffs for the camera.”

Morales throws a look across one shoulder like the mere thought is blasphemy. “What kind of man are you?” he asks, sucking in a lungful of air when Rust picks up speed. “That’s why we gotta fuckin’ get close enough to see for ourselves.”

The scaling wall is coming up fast and Rust hits it first, wrapping his hands around the rope and shimmying up toward the top as quick as a cat. Morales goes slower but doesn’t lag until they get near the ledge, and when he starts to fall back Rust is wrapping a hand around his forearm, hoisting him up and over while he straddles the top.

“Gotta lay off that taffy,” Rust says while they descend on the other side. “Nearly yanked my fucking arm out of the socket.”

“I’ll lay off when I’m dead,” Morales says, jumping the rest of the way off the wall instead of scaling down it. He starts back at a jog and Rust thuds down in the mud behind him, pumping his knees to keep his boots from sinking too far down into the muck.

They see the barbed wire coming up and both heave out matching sighs, falling down onto their stomachs to crawl underneath it.

"She's gonna have a hundred fucking men preening and gussying up to her," Morales says through gritted teeth while he elbows through mud. "I gotta stand out, man, gotta get her to zero in on me."

"Sure that won't be a problem," Rust says, veering over towards Morales to avoid a low-hanging strand of wire. "You always know how to talk real pretty for the ladies."

"That's right, brother. And be damned if it doesn’t work."

They pull themselves out from under the wire and struggle back to their feet, fronts caked over with wet mud and grime. Rust's muscles are burning but he keeps on, Favre and Demma leading the way in front of them. Morales' breath comes fast as they hop through the rubber tires, careful to step right in the middle for fear of tumbling down into the sand pit.

"Gallagher's gonna give you a run for your money," Rust says as they approach a long section of open field for the final sprint. "Saw him picking up a bunch of roses."

Morales scoffs, shooting a sour look in Rust's direction. "I don't need roses to woo women, Tex. You oughta know that by now."

They pick up their pace and run full-tilt to the end of the course where Favre and Demma are already coming to a halt, trying not to bend over and brace their hands on their knees. Rust never ran from much in his life, save for one thing, and he's always caught off guard by how far he can push his body. He and Morales take a few final loping strides and fall in behind the first two, trying to even out their ragged breathing.

Rust catches sight of Ginger near the back of the pack, swinging his arms and otherwise leaving all effort across the ocean from which he came. When it’s his turn to start vaulting over the scale wall he goes up with some minor difficulty and then straddles the top, except when another hand reaches up for help he smacks their palm in a high five and hoots before slipping down the other side.

Salter is behind them a few yards beyond the finish point, set up in a tall chair with a bullhorn and his polished whistle. He looks up from where he’d been joking with Thomas Howard, who'd managed to finish a full minute before anybody else. “Shit, they don’t call you Hotfoot for nothing, Howard,” he says, tipping his head down to peer over the tops of his mirrored sunglasses. “I ain’t seen somebody clear the course in a time that clean since—oh for fuck’s sake, hold on a second—”

Ginger and Harrison Gill are dead last now and more than a few good strides behind the rest, only just now starting to drop down into the mud hole under the barbed wire obstacle. Salter watches them with disgust wedged deep in the creases on his face and then holds the bullhorn up to his mouth, bellowing into it to start.

“If there was a two-bit Irish whore and a potato farm down here, Flannagan, I bet you’d have cleared the line twenty fucking minutes ago. And Gill,” he keeps on, standing up from his seat, “if you look that fucking asleep in combat the Krauts are going to kill you with half a bullet and a goddamn pea shooter, so do yourself a favor and _look alive!”_  
  
"Yes sir, Lieutenant sir," Gingers says, his voice contorted into something deep and mocking through his huffing and puffing.  He squares his shoulders and picks up his pace, breathing loud through the small ‘o’ he’s forming with his lips.  Gill sees him coming in hot from behind and sets his jaw to speed up as well, gasping when Ginger nudges his shoulder.

“Back off!” Gill exclaims, both of them kicking up dirt and flinging mud with every step.

“Didn’t you hear the boss, son?” Ginger yells, leaning into the other man so hard that they both tilt off to one side. “Look alive!”

Both of them are so focused on beating each other out that they don’t notice Christensen puffing along a few feet in front of them, hanging onto a steady pace as he heaves like a chugging locomotive. Gill steps on the back of his heel when Ginger shoves him and Christensen yelps, hopping forward on one foot as he reaches down to clutch for the other. Doc Cage is only a few steps ahead and turns around to gawk at the commotion, his eyes widening when he sees the group approaching in a trampling stampede. He tries to pick up and move out of their way but Gill and Ginger plow through the poor medic before he has time to think, knocking him forward and clean off his feet.

Dwayne Gallagher is next in line and approaching the finish, an easy smile hanging on his lips. “Hey fellas!” he calls out to the other men standing and heaving beyond the line, “I cut off about thirty seconds from last t—”

His sentence dies in his throat when Cage takes him down, grasping for purchase on his back two belt loops. Gallagher yells like he’s been shot and Ginger rams the final nail in the coffin by slamming into the two of them and mowing both men over and down into the ground.

Gallagher stumbles before he goes and latches onto Lutz, who was bent over with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. He tries to shuffle out of the way and steps over Morales’ foot, promptly taking him out at the knee.

“What the _f—!_ _”_ Morales gasps, reaching for Rust’s shoulder as his eyes go comically wide. He collapses to his knees and Rust falters, too, tipping to the side like a falling skyscraper and landing on top of his friend.

Ginger’s reign of terror doesn’t end until he’s taken out Favre and Demma, too, both men pitching over at the end of the line like fallen timber. Demma falls face-first into the mud with a splatter and Favre's feet fly out from under him as he finds his place on the ground. Ginger slides down to his knees and throws his arms out once he’s past the finish line, falling to press his cheek to the dirt several long strides ahead of Gill.

The men still unscathed come to a halt on the course to watch the carnage unfold. Salter beholds the whole display in silent horror, blinking a few times to make sure he’s not seeing things. He shakes his head from side to side with an awful sneer pulling on his upper lip and swallows hard.

“What the fucking fuck is all this shit?” he says once he finds his voice, deadly quiet. “Is this the Three fucking Stooges? We playing a game of goddamn dominoes?”

He drops out of his chair so his heels hit the ground with a thud, and from where he’s still laying in the dirt Rust thinks the sound echoes with something like hard-won finality. Salter’s bullhorn kisses the ground next to his boots as he all but tears his sunglasses off his face, throwing his arms out wide like a surrendering martyr.   
  
“I might as fucking well line you up front-to-back and put you all out of your misery my fucking self,” Salter shouts. “One bullet through Flannagan’s goddamn forehead to start and take you all out in one fell swoop. Because it looks like that’s the kind of fucking company I’m running here—nothing but a herd of brainless cattle walking headlong into the slaughter!”

The men groan and start to pull themselves up off the ground but the Lieutenant isn’t finished, stomping around them and heaving like a riled bull until the toes of his boots are by Ginger’s face. “Do I even need to utter this aloud, Flannagan? But consider your weekend pass—and the next two months’ worth of weekend passes—goddamn revoked. Your ass is grounded until we’ve long since cleared out and moved north, do you hear me?” he spits, leaning close over the muddy redhead. “You’ll be lucky if your R&R time is spent scrubbing out the fucking latrines on chili night.”

Rust pulls Morales up by the forearm and winces against the pain throbbing in his right hip, watching as Demma mops shit-brown mud from around his mouth and eyes with a splutter. Every man on his feet is covered in grime and Salter sizes them up with his eyes nearly bulging out of his head, stomping around them in a wide arc.

"All the rest of you feel free to get the hell out of my sight—I’ve never seen such a goddamn travesty in my whole life. I might as well write next of kin letters home to every single one of your mamas tonight, tell ‘em sorry but Little Johnny ain’t coming back. Fucking despicable.”

“Lieutenant,” Gill pipes in meekly from below with a grunt of pain. “You’re standing on my hand.”

Salter looks down and then steps back off Gill’s fingers, wiping a palm over his mouth. His eyes have gone glassy with anger but he looks tired, like all his usual vigor has seeped down into the mud with most of the platoon.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he says, arms slapping against his sides with a rattling sigh. “On that fucking note, consider yourselves dismissed.”

Morales groans and pushes his hair off his forehead, starting the long walk back to barracks with Rust standing in the long slant of his shadow. “Chin up, slick,” he says, plucking the sopping wet cotton of his shirt away from his stomach with a squelching sound. “We still got Miss Landis to look forward to.”

   


 

Rust opens his mouth under the soft spray of water, rinsing off the last traces of dirt. The voices of thirty men bounce off the shower walls and he doesn’t bother to add his own.

“Clean on up, boys!” Morales calls, louder than the rest and in the stall right next door. “Gonna need more than what y’all have got to beat me to Carole.”

“Can’t wash off the kinda dirty you carry with you, Morales,” Shreveport calls from the far corner. “She’s gonna take one look at you and run the other way.”

“I got her five different bouquets!” Dwayne calls.

“Shut the fuck up, Gallagher,” Farve mumbles on Rust’s other side.

Morales hits the stall wall separating him from Rust, sticking his foot underneath to toe the tile on Rust’s side. “You gotta help me tie my tie right,” Morales says, a little quieter. The men start to get rowdy and a bar of soap flies through the air, landing somewhere close to Howard.

“What am I, your mama?” Rust says, watching Morales pull his foot back into his own space.

“Nah, but you’re all I’ve got, so you’ll have to do,” Morales says, and Rust can almost hear him smiling.

The other men start hollering so loud that Rust’s ears ring, and before long the main door leading to the showers is slamming open and their yells taper off as they try to assess the situation blind.

“Shreveport!” Salter’s voice shouts, a shrill and piercing sound against the tile walls. “Weekend pass fucking revoked. Can hear you from two fucking miles away.” And then he’s gone as quick as he appeared, the door hardly swinging closed behind him.

There’s muffled muttering in his wake, including Shreveport mumbling and kicking away the bar of soap that had somehow found him. “Wasn’t even that loud,” he groans, turning off his water and fumbling for his glasses.

“Maybe if you hadn’t been beating off so loud in there,” Howard calls over the din of water, stoking up a roaring chorus of laughter as Shreveport throws them all his middle finger in a parting salute and stomps back out toward the barracks.

“Holy shit,” Morales whispers, turning off his water too. “Like we’re walking on goddamn eggshells.”

Rust pats his chest dry and then wraps the nearest towel around his waist, trying to ignore the way the grimy tile beneath his feet makes chills crawl up his calves like caterpillars. He steps out of the shower stall and pads along the wood planking, following the trail of wet footprints Morales left ahead of him.

On the way back to the barracks Favre is a few paces in front of Rust, still as naked as the day he was born, and his towel slips down to the dirt for a second or two before he picks it back up again. Salter appears from behind the barracks building like some kind of mirage, drumming his finger on his chin. Favre takes one look at him and is struck dumb, barely covering himself up before Salter raises his eyebrows with the barest hint of a smirk on his face.

“Think you just lost your weekend pass, Private,” he says, looking him up and down. “I’d keep my personal business under wraps if I were you.”

Rust tries to pass by unnoticed and leans in close to Morales’ ear when they walk into the barracks, sliding between the two rows of beds where all the men are in varying states of undress.

“Salter’s on the prowl,” he says, glancing quick over his shoulder to make sure the coast is clear of their lieutenant. “I’d mind your step and your manners, he’s picking them off like goddamn daisies.”

“You’re so sweet, mama, looking out for me,” Morales says with a snort, shaking his head. “I’ll be a good little boy—I promise.”

Howard is bent over in his foot locker rummaging around for something with his bare ass shining like the full moon and Morales promptly rolls his towel up and cracks it like a whip, nearly making the other man topple headfirst into his trunk with a red welt already forming on one pale cheek.

“Jesus Christ, Tony, this ain’t a goddamn Roman bathhouse,” Howard gripes, holding a wad of undershorts against his front when he spins around. “Make me fall in my locker and bust up all my goodies for Camille. Thank fuck it’s mostly clothes and—”   
  
“What was that, Private?” Salter’s voice suddenly booms from the other end of the long hall as he stomps closer. “Contraband in my barracks? Let’s take a little look-see.”

Howard is still stripped naked and stands next to his bed with his whole body flushed a painful shade of pink while Salter stoops over to dig through the open trunk. There’s a few parcels wrapped in brown paper tucked close to the bottom and the first one rips open with ease, a sheer pink negligee tumbling delicately out, pillowed by an orange blouse and a folded-up lace dress. Salter goes for the pink number first, picking it up by one of the delicate straps with two fingers like he might catch some kind of disease if he holds it too close. He raises it up in the air for the rest of the men to get a good eyeful.

“Didn’t know you were this kind of man, Howard,” Salter says, narrowing his eyes at the lingerie before letting it flutter back down into the foot locker. “Think this kind of business is going to cost you your weekend pass.”

Howard’s mouth opens and closes and he draws in a breath. “But—but sir, they’re for my—”

“No excuses, Private,” Salter says, already scanning his surroundings for anything else out of place. “Just because you fly through the course doesn’t mean you’re gonna get special treatment. Consider any good times you were planning on having tonight...duly revoked.”

He turns on his heel and peers around at the other soldiers, standing there trying to bite back laughter or look as unsuspicious as possible. “As you were, men,” Salter says with a nod, then marches himself back out into the mid-morning daylight.

The lazy grin that was spread across Morales’s face has shrunk down somewhat when they start getting dressed by their beds, and Rust watches as the other man fusses with peeling back the lining of his trunk’s lid to check something before wedging it back into place.

“You weren’t kidding,” he says, roughly pulling an undershirt on so his dog tags clink together against his chest. “That motherfucker’s out for blood.”

Rust flops down on his mattress and picks up the book he’d abandoned the night before, flipping open to a marked page. “Told you.”

He’s using Marty’s last letter as a bookmark and it slides out to land in his lap. He takes it in his hand and skims over the folded edge, hoping that another one is well on its way. That farm feels like it’s the thing he left behind when he came over here, and sometimes he can feel strangely familiar threads of it when he wakes up from a faltering dream. He can never remember any of them despite how they dominate his nights, but lately the dark ones that grip him have moved aside for something decidedly lighter.

“Nothing else yet, huh?” Morales asks, peering down at him.

“Not yet,” Rust says, laying the letter on the mattress next to his hip.

“Hear they might start getting things to us faster,” Morales says, rummaging through his clothes. “Some kinda soldier specific mail, way they sort it or some shit. But if it means mama’s care packages get into these loving arms a few days earlier then I’ll be all for it and more.”

He laughs to himself as he unwraps one of his last hoarded pieces of taffy and pops it into his mouth. “Maybe those love letters of yours from our friend Mr. Hart will get here a little quicker, too.”

“Maybe,” Rust says with a sniff, not bothering to look up or rise to Morales’ bait as he turns the page. “Be one more love letter than you’re gettin’.”

“Touche,” Morales says around a mouthful of pink taffy as he drops down onto his own bed.

Rust doesn’t say anything about how he hopes they do get here faster, in the end. Maybe something about the thought makes Marty feel that much closer.

 

 

The chatter in the mess hall for lunch is almost deafening, so many mentions of Carole Landis’ name that it soon stops sounding like a real title, something fated to be heard like a resounding echo wherever the platoon goes. Able Company had already seen her two days before and word from their camp makes her sound like an angel, some bright and shining star like none of them had ever seen before. They get to see girls in town but nothing like Carole, one of Hollywood’s loveliest ladies, something plucked from their daytime fantasies that they’re eager to see play out in living color.

There are a few men whose dreams have been dashed before they ever got their flight wings. Favre rips a bite off of his roll and stares down into his plate, ignoring all the rabble rousing and focusing on his disappointment. Howard and Shreveport are nowhere to be found, surely off sulking about their losses. Morales is still in high spirits, though, continually declaring that as soon as Carole sets eyes on him her high class Hollywood boyfriend will be scattered dust on a forgotten wind.

“No woman can resist this face,” he says, grinning and showing off the black bean stuck between his two front teeth. “Got a thousand-watt smile and the engine torque to match,” he says, swaying a little in his seat with a few jaunty rolls of his hips. “If you know what I mean.”

“Christ Morales, I’m trying to eat over here,” Gallagher says around a mouthful of bread, sticking his tongue out and pretending to heave. “Nobody here knows what the hell you’re talking about nohow.”

Ginger is sitting at the far end of the table with his cronies Varnum and Weems and cups his hands around his mouth to holler high and loud across the mess. “Except maybe Princess Cohle!” he says, earning jeering laughs from his friends and a few others. “We all know how he likes to hump your leg like a bitch dog in heat.”

The mess goes quiet for a few beating moments and then Morales’ fork drops onto his tray with a clatter.

“Tony,” Rust warns in a low voice, putting a hand on the other man’s forearm as he goes to stand. “Don’t do it, you know he ain’t worth shit—”

“Yeah, listen to your girlfriend, _Tony_ _,”_ Ginger says, putting on a shit-eating grin while he mocks Rust’s voice around the nickname. “He always knows what’s good for you, right?”

Morales reaches down to push Rust’s hand away and steps over the bench, keeping his eyes locked on the redhead the whole time. “You wanna run that by me again, Kelly?” he asks, cracking his knuckles together. “Maybe just once more so I can knock it out of your fucking mouth this time.”

Ginger shrugs and holds his hands up before letting them drop back into his lap. “You heard me,” he says. “Ain’t no big secret that you keep the Tax Man on a leash.”

Rust tries one more time, doing his best to sound calm against the building tension gathering around them. “He ain’t got shit to lose, man,” he says to Morales’ back. “The stakes you’re looking at are running a lot higher.”

Ginger grins and it looks like he’s got too many teeth, sharp and crooked and one of them stained roan. “Settle on down, boy,” he says. “Cohle there can suck your cock for you when you’re back in the barracks, ease you right off.”

Morales all but growls and lunges in Ginger’s direction, leaping clear across the table between them and sending one plate clattering to the floor. He lands on top of the other man and hits him once across the jaw and then again, this time his knuckles smashing hard into Ginger’s already crooked nose with a sickening crunch.

“Fuck,” Rust whispers, making to run over there to his friend’s aid when the whole rest of the hall leaps to their feet at the sound of the door slamming open. His eyes find the source of the noise and he sees Salter striding into the room, moving directly towards the commotion like a demon bent for hell.  
  
“Y’all are having yourselves one hell of a fucking day,” Salter yells, standing over Morales and Ginger with his hands on his hips. “Cohle—! Get the fuck over here and get this idiot up. Talking about the one on top, not the one bleeding on the floor.”

Rust moves over with quick and sure steps to get his hands around Morales, helping haul him up off Ginger where he’d been straddled across his lower body. He’s got blood staining his knuckles but when Rust looks closer he can tell it’s not any of Morales’ own.

The mess hall has gone deadly silent save for the cooks clanging away in the kitchen and Salter bends to yank Ginger up off the floor, getting a handful of his shirtfront and pulling the redhead to his feet. His nose is dripping a bright red stream and Salter shoves him away before leveling him with a pointed finger.

“I must’ve not made myself clear enough earlier, Flannagan, revoking your weekend passes. Must’ve been some fucking joke, right? No big fucking deal. Well think again, Einstein, because starting with Private Morales—” he spits, whirling around to where Rust has still got an arm around his friend, “—every single one of you fuckasses in Fox Company isn’t stepping a single foot outside camp tonight. You can all kiss Carole Landis goodbye.”

Morales stiffens against Rust’s side and takes a tentative step forward, immediately opening his arms in a placating sort of gesture. “Lieutenant,” he says, “I don’t think—”

“Did I stutter, Morales?” Salter bellows, eyes blown wide enough to pop out of his head. “And I think it’s plenty fucking clear that you _don’t_ think, considering you just single-handedly helped every man in this room lose not only tonight’s pass, but the next two weeks’ as well. So maybe I’d stop while you’re goddamn ahead.”

A collective sigh blows through the mess like a broken wind and Morales’ olive skin flushes dark, eyes finding some vacant spot on the far wall. His mouth pinches into a firm line but he nods, not saying another word.

Salter’s gaze swivels back around to where Weems is handing Ginger a used dinner napkin to blot around the blood slowly oozing from his purple nose. “Latrine duty every night for the foreseeable future until I say otherwise, Flannagan,” he says. “I don’t care how many goddamn times we move camp, I don’t care if we march across the channel into France and then straight into fucking Germany—you’re going to be scrubbing out kraut chamber pots until you see them in your sleep. Do I make myself clear?”

Any of the smirking buffoonery Ginger might’ve had left in him before bleeds out onto the floor around his feet. His face goes leaden but he manages to bite out a tight-lipped, “Yes sir, Lieutenant.”

“This company is shaping up to not even be good enough for Montana Lee to use for goddamn target practice,” Salter says, addressing the rest of the mess. “Seems like he’d have a harder time picking off blind fish in a barrel, but maybe we’ll let him decide that for himself when he gets here.”

Rust was standing still and silent but his ears perk up at the name. Not something he’s heard before, and he’s got a pretty good hold on the guys in his company, even those in Able and Clutch. For Salter to talk about him like that, Rust knows he’s got to be someone they haven’t seen before. He’d heard the Major discussing a sharpshooter that might be rotating into their squad last time he visited, but they never named names, only sat around with beers smirking like schoolboys. Rust tries to catch Morales’ eye but his friend only continues to stare straight ahead, his mouth set in a firm line.  
  
“In the meantime,” the lieutenant continues in a firm voice, “I came in here with news before you queens decided to throw yourselves a little fucking tea party, so let’s get back to business: we’re starting to pack up and move camp at fifteen-hundred hours tomorrow after your daily exercises, orders courtesy of General Compton. We’ll be moving north to King’s Lynn where you’ll be bunking with civilian families throughout our stay.”

A low murmur ripples through the men as they turn to look at one another, shrugging and shaking their heads.

“So I suggest,” Salter finishes, “that you tighten the fuck up. As you were!”

Rust’s heart hammers in his chest for a moment as he glances back at Morales but the other man still hasn’t moved, just watches Salter as he exits the way he came. The mood hanging over the mess hall is a dismal one and Ginger kicks over an empty bench before storming out the side door, letting it swing there in his wake. Rust can feel more than one set of eyes burning on the spot where they stand and he smacks Morales gently on the arm. “Hey,” he says, swallowing thick, “you wanna finish eating?”

Morales tongues the corner of his mouth and shakes his head, sagging as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Wanna go put myself out of my misery with my own fucking pillow, more like.” He spares Rust a glance and his eyes are already more than a little red. They both pick up their trays and knock the contents off into the trash, leaving them on top of it before they head back out again.

Rust hears Salter’s words echoing in his head as they make their way to the barracks, Morales casting a dark shape of gloomy shadow. _Civilian Families. Families._ And all at once he’s bombarded with shades of the past, a little breezy street that passed for a neighborhood with flowers in almost all the front lawns. A house they’d been lucky enough to close on, _an actual guest bedroom_ Claire had said, her eyes shining bright under all the happiness that’d been thrust upon them.

They’d been so young, back then. Young and dumb and eager. And now here on the last leg of twenty-three, Rust already feels like he’s lived a thousand lives.

The Pierces across the street had brought over apple pie the day they moved in and an angel food cake when Sophia was born, them and their twin girls cooing over the new baby like they’d never seen one before. And Rust stood behind them, his heart swelling with pride, every fiber of his being buzzing with the love he felt for his new daughter. It had never really been his choice but he didn’t mind the get-togethers Claire arranged, and once they’d had four different families clamouring around in their back yard with Morales laughing next to him, not weighed down in a soldier’s uniform and the building burden of war. Sophia was almost two and would squeal when the other children tickled her, would laugh so hard when Rust swung her through the air. The way he smiled when he looked at her was something he never thought possible before.

The neighbors didn’t bring food when she died, no cakes, no pies, no ripened peaches. All the families seemed to avoid their house and them with it like the plague, like death might catch and break them up like it had broken the Cohles. A family one day and a rancid dead thing the next.

It didn’t take long for Claire to leave. Didn’t take long for Rust to want to die, either.

“You coming?” Morales asks, standing there in the entrance to the barracks.

A fine sheen of sweat is shining on Rust’s forehead and for a moment he can hardly breathe, can’t will his legs to work for anything, but Morales snaps his fingers until two blue eyes find him.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, mouth slanting into a little frown.

“Nothing,” Rust says, clearing his throat. “Nothin'.”

Morales leads the way back into the barracks, all the beds still made and empty. It’s just a hair past high noon but he moves like grey smoke toward the end of the hall, shaking his head while Rust follows.

“Sometimes you go off into this place in your head, man,” Morales says, throwing himself down onto his mattress when he gets within falling distance. “Ain’t saying it’s a bad thing, but don’t get too far. If you ever get lost up in there I gotta be able to come fish you out.”

Rust wonders how much Morales might know, about the things that loiter around the edges of his vision sometimes. Colors and shapes and wisps of things that aren’t there when he blinks, that his hand cuts through like mist when he reaches out to touch them. He doesn’t talk about it, though. And in the years since he lost his little girl there wasn’t one single solitary thing that could reign those things in, that could ground him back in reality and ease the warring thoughts in his mind.

Funnily enough, not until Martin Hart.

His attachment to Morales already worried him, going into this. The idea that he might lose him, that he might die and leave him behind. And he thought Marty might get attached to him, the single voice in his harsh days alone. But he never really thought it would be this way, that he would be the one clinging to thoughts of this man in his head. Sophia burned pink in the depth of his mind where he allowed himself to think of her, the first hints of sunset, a fledgling life so eager to move on, a flashing grin that so closely mirrored his own.

But Marty burns gold, the thought of him so strong and bold that Rust is nearly blinded in the face of it. He doesn’t know why, it doesn’t make any sense and he tries to scratch it out sometimes, tries to dwell in the darkness. But where he can press Sophia down and where he can cover up the peachy pink pain that radiates in the memory of her, Marty works his way to the forefront of Rust’s mind. Like he believes he’s meant to be there.

 Some fucking guy he barely knows, on some farm he’s never seen, in some town he’s never been to.

“I’m alright,” he says, smiling softly over at Morales to reassure him. “I’m sorry you ain’t gonna get to see Carole.”

“No fault of yours, Tex,” Morales says with a sigh, reaching over to pull one of his dog-eared paperbacks out of his side table. “Least Ginger got a good beating out of it, the fucking prick.”

He settles further down against his pillow, slumped there like some road-killed animal with the book falling to cover his face. “Sure wish I could’ve seen her up close, though,” he murmurs, words muffled behind the pages. “Was looking forward to getting well-acquainted with such a lovely lady.”

Rust tries not to smile as he lays back on his own bed and stretches his legs out. “You just wanted to get well-acquainted with her tits.”

“Don’t talk about Miss Carole that way,” Morales says, pulling the book off his face to slap the edge of Rust’s mattress with it. He shakes his head and closes his eyes, dark brows slowly sliding further up on his forehead. “Damn, she does have one hell of a rack though.”

Rust waits until Morales starts softly snoring to let his own lids sink lower, watching afternoon sunlight cast shapes on the wall as it cuts in through the window. If he stares long enough the blur of shadow will stretch and pull into things that aren’t so obsolete, and he thinks he sees an animal there, something with long legs galloping through the shifting gold.

He’s still trying to figure out what it might be when his eyes slide shut and he falls off into the lull of an easy sleep.

 

   


Rust jolts awake when someone that sounds like Gallagher barks out a harsh laugh. It’s definitely lacking it’s usual mirth and warmth but he’s too focused on waking up to think on it too much. He blinks and sits up, and when he does a piece of paper slides down off his chest into his lap. Marty’s handwriting stands out right away.

He rubs his eyes and he’s sure that he’s dreaming, is a little bit surprised that everything feels so real. But he glances over at Morales and finds that he’s still fast asleep, drooling heavily into his pillow with his dark lashes cast low. The rest of their platoon is milling about the barracks, slumped in bed or taking part in the impromptu game of poker that’s unfolding on the floor over by Shreveport’s bed. A big pile of smokes and a few cheesecake pictures make up the pot, mixed in with what looks like a pack of chewing gum and a Little Debbie snack cake. He can hear rain coming down hard outside and sees it streaking down the windows in steep waves.

Rust’s bed is the last one on the row and he quietly turns over onto his side to face the wall, sliding a finger under the envelope’s seal while the other men murmur behind him. He unfolds the letter and the first thing he notices is that it has a big blot of ink about halfway down the page, like Marty’s pen had stopped there long enough to pool out a puddle of black.

It’s dry when he touches it, of course. He thinks of Marty somewhere two weeks ago, swearing over his stained fingertips but moving on with his thoughts all the same. It takes some effort to not start where the mistake marks the page but Rust’s eyes dutifully go to the top and start there.

The weight of the day still lives heavy between his eyes. He didn’t mind the other men losing their passes, didn’t mind losing his own, but seeing Morales so down always drags him low, too, like all his friend's carefree lightness had been sucked away through the both of them. And the quick jaunt into the past didn’t help, still makes his bones quake when he thinks about it, about living with families that’ll remind him of everything he lost, everything that he could have had.

But something happens when he starts reading the letter. He finds his face relaxing, his shoulders going slack as he sinks into some kind of ease. The voice he has for Marty might be completely off but it’s already taken root in his head, going buttery smooth over the words as he sounds them out. Marty sounds like horses running on sun-warmed earth, the way a coyote barks out a laugh in the desert at night. He sounds like a slow song on the country radio and boot heels thudding on a wooden floor, vaguely familiar sounds pulled from the tapestry of Rust’s past.

And when he makes it to the inkblot he finds himself drawn in with rapt attention.

Rust almost forgot about the foal, but when he sees that it’s been born and how goddamn happy Marty seems he feels something twisting in his stomach. A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth as he reads about Marty waking up to find it there and it only grows bigger as he keeps reading. His cheeks feel hot and his ears are already flaring red but it’s nothing but something good, a chill starting at the tips of his toes and sending a wave through his body.

Lily’s baby doesn’t have a name yet but Rust can see it like it was a photo cut from the book of his own memories. In the place behind his eyes, though, it looms strong and large—not quite the thin wisp of a colt spelled out for him on the page.

Rust closes his eyes against the words and he can almost feel the strong warmth of a horse, its soft breath blowing the smell of hay and sweet oats in his hair. The air is warmer and drier than it’s been in England for months and there’s something else, too, so real and potent he almost wants to sit up in bed and look over his shoulder at the hard wall. Not as massive as the horse but something familiar all the same, and if he keeps his eyes closed maybe he can catch a glimpse, turn around and see—

“Get that fucking clown away from me,” Morales slurs in his sleep, shifting around so the spine of his book hits the floor with a crack. “Fuckin’ told you I don’t...know any goddamn party tricks.”

Rust’s eyes snap open and then the letter is just paper in his hand, the words swimming a little in front of his eyes. He blows out a long breath and blinks a few times, trying to clear the residual smears of something dreamlike from his head. He runs his thumbs over the words all the same, a gift there all on their own.

He feels like he hasn’t moved this fast in ages but he retrieves his new stationery from under his bed and fishes a pen out, too, bracing the paper on top of his ledger as he starts to write. The warmth the letter gave him feels almost alive in its own right, sitting solid but soft in the square center of his chest.

The rain comes down harder as he gets all his thoughts as straight as he can and presses them into the paper. As soon as he’s finished Rust paws around for an envelope and a stamp, sealing the thing shut as quick as he can. He tucks Marty’s open letter under his pillow and gets to his feet, thinking for a moment about waking Morales up. He decides against it, making his way towards the door. None of the other guys look up as he goes, too wrapped up in their game to notice.

Their makeshift post office is over a mile away but he gets there on pure adrenaline, hardly aware of the rain stinging his skin. Hughes is there when he pushes through the door, filling up a bulging burlap bag with two of the guys from Dog Company. He looks up when he hears the door and nods at Rust, only the slightest trace of confusion in his eyes.

“Cohle,” he says, hoisting the bag up so it doesn’t tip over. “You walk all the way here in the rain? Did I give you the right letter?”

“Sure did,” Rust says. He glances down at the new envelope in his hand and holds it out. “Just got a reply to send, wanted to make sure it went out today.”

“You’re a fast worker, buddy,” Hughes says, laughing. “Well, drop it right in.”

He remembers when Claire used to press kisses to the backs of envelopes, would call it good luck and nudge Rust away from her when he’d raise his eyebrows in question. _Gotta make sure it arrives safe_ she would say.

He can only hold the letter tight for a moment before letting it go.

 

* * *

 

Today took a deep dive into the pisser pretty early on but your letter lifted me right up. It takes a lot, these days, but reading what you had to say about the new colt really did put me in good spirits. Wish I could see him too, but I almost could just reading your letter. I'm real happy you get to experience all that, it's nice to think there's some kinda peace still holding steady in the world.  
  
He does sound like a real pretty little thing. I'll be thinking on the name, get right back to you if anything strikes me. Sure he might show you what he wants to be called soon enough—they tend to do that with their personalities, grow into a name before it grows into them. Sometimes I think it's strange, naming babies before you ever get to know them. Don't know how my mama got so lucky with me.   
  
Think I know what you were talking about with the land. Think it might be especially true in your case, dedicating all your time and hard work to the farm you live on. You're bringing it to life all on your own. Well, what's Blue got to say about the new baby? Think they'll get along?   
  
Hope Maggie is doing well. It's hard to stay positive over here, feels like whenever we get a glimpse of something good it gets snatched right away from us. Carole Landis has been in town all week and is leaving tomorrow, and the whole company was expecting to go and see her tonight, especially Tony. Planned to get all cleaned up, knew exactly what he wanted to say to her. Was practically setting a damn wedding date, but our Lieutenant revoked passes last minute. It's pouring down rain right now as I write to you and Tony is passed out, probably trying to sleep his blues away. Haven't seen him this down in a while.   
  
As for the other thing, I guess we'll see how things turn out. It's hard to keep the idea from taking flight and I know most of the other guys think about it too, a lot more than they let on. War isn't something to take lightly, it's damn near a miracle when somebody actually makes it back in one piece. I don't like to make promises I can't keep, and I would rather you be prepared if the day does come where I stop responding.   
  
I'll pass on your words to Tony, but if we actually do ever get to sit down we might have to carry him home ourselves. Man’s a bit of a drinker. Keep me updated on the little one. Like I said, it was real good reading what you had to say. For a moment it felt like I was there, on that farm, and none of this was real.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

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